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Me Myself&I

The future of RSS is RSS

https://kottke.org/23/11/the-future-of-rss-is-textcasting-1

No.

The goal is interop between social media apps and the features writers need.

Social media apps don’t matter and are an addictive mess in which people don’t read. It’s flame wars and egos. It is pointless and gamed to oblivion. Stop trying to do something with them. Quit them.

What we’re doing: Moving documents between networked apps. We need a set of common features in order for it to work.

We already have this, times a million. RSS does this just fine. Bookmarks in a browser as well. Email is ubiquitous.

The features are motivated by the needs of writers. Not by programmers or social media company execs.

The writers only need an online platform to share their writing. Again, we have this times a million. I’d suggest WordPress, but you can go ahead with anything today. If you’re a writer and want your platform, get your server, deploy your platform, write. Period.

Everyday users need a default writer and reader.

Again, we already have that, and I disagree that it should be one app for all. You can never satisfy everyone UX/UI wise which is why it’s important to have diversity here. The protocol needs not to change. The apps? They should. I agree that native apps should be fantastic, as this really makes it so much more enjoyable to use. Having a RSS reader that stalls every single time you click on a feed, is horrible. One that makes it a fluid experience and has great text rendering, will make you open it every single day.

I will also go as far as saying that styling of HTML content from the internet should be rendered as the reader wants it. If I prefer Times New Roman for everything I read, I should be able to decide that. If I prefer green fonts size 45 with black background, you shouldn’t be enforcing another style on me. I’m here for the writing, not the styling.

We need user and content discovery.

Curation is a reader’s job and it should stay this way. Why? Because content discovery becomes a middle man managed by an entity, which will be biased or corrupt at some point. Every person is different and should seek what they want. Also, serendipity needs to happen. Website names are usually enough. If someone is big or interesting, you will hear back from them sooner than later (this is how Dave’s blog and Kottke.org ended up in my RSS reader). Also simply put, it is impossible to do content discovery right at the scale of the internet. We’re all different. Understand what you look for, and look for it.

We need metrics.

Metrics are useless and game-able. Thus, even more useless. But the biggest problem to me is that it pushes writers to become 1 dimensional (oh, I had 10x more readers for this, so now I’ll only write about that). It killed the mid-2000s blogging era. That usually sparks a downright spiral in quality, and soon ads come up because you’re a “business” now that you look at your metrics every single day. That’s unhealthy. Write. Just write. If it gets big, publishers will know and contact you.

We need moderation.

You write. I read. Close your comments if you need to. Moderate them heavily if you don’t. But the “need for moderation” is not necessary because the vast majority of writers don’t have millions of readers coming in to comment. And if you do (super ultra rare person) have thousands of commenters ready to comment, a platform like WordPress has all the tools for you to deal with it. Also conversations in comments used to happen. Now people just try to be the main character.

Social media is not writing and never was. It’s snarky BS. Dave himself keeps saying that on his blog so I’m not sure why he also wants to connect with those apps. Writing online is an old thing, and we have all the tools already.

Get your server/domain. Deploy your platform. Write.

(that Kottke post is a perfect example of a programmer trying to reinvent the wheel once again, and a designer focusing on features that most readers/writers don’t need)

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Me Myself&I

OF

I have so many questions about OnlyFans.

  • I imagine the spectrum is the same as other online businesses: 1% of performers makes 99% of the money. What’s the average, actual payment? If it is low (the internet says $180/month), how much work does it represent?
  • How does it impact performers’ own intimacy? How does one feel after spending hours with their genitals out, toying with them and chatting for work? How long does it take to “reset”?
  • Is there a lot of pleasure in catching people’s attention, is it creating incentive to be more deceptive to manipulate them more?
  • Why men pay so much more than women, and simultaneously hate on women selling it? Isn’t it making no sense?
  • No stalking/local doxxing issues yet? That seems incredibly unlikely but I hope there aren’t many.
  • Isn’t relying on social media, which is unreliable as hell, a dangerous thing?
  • How long can you do that for?
  • Why banks are OK with it after saying no and what happened there?
  • Why the second it involves sex, grind culture is wildly accepted?
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Me Myself&I

Suprem

One thing about me is, I’m wearing something that I like until it dies dies.

This Supreme shirt has seen a lot in about 15 years. The most action and sweat was from TV shows all over the valley and from a local library branch. It supported me well and I would get regular comments (this is a special Powell Peralta edition shout out ex wife!) on it. It has seen a lot of different vistas and people.

I do not know if I threw it away the other day or if I put it aside for some zombie action like using it for a future paint job.

I might see it again.

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Me Myself&I

Big G

Thinking about Google. They’re in court right now being investigated for monopoly practices (paying Apple $20B/year to be the default search engine while competing against them in the phone business is some wild shit), their Android phones are quite a mess from so many angles despite being on version 14, they’re notorious for bad support and killing products people enjoy. And yet, the brand is intact and they’re making more money than ever.

There’s a sunk-cost fallacy happening with everyone who grew up with Google. It’s like they can’t possibly turn their back from a company that is uh, well a big, US corporate company.

Baby you need help. Understand that the world with the least possible amount of Google, works well. Maybe a couple billion people do that just fine? Probably more.

Get into the open web. Email for private, site for public. Full RSS, period. No ads, no stats. Give. Ponder. Squeeze your brain. That’s what the internet was invented for.

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Me Myself&I

Basketball stuff

The Aces made it back to back. The bench showed up. Jackie Young with the defensive play at the last second to secure the win (defense wins championships, always), just impeccable. I had paused that video and found it a few days later:

W A S T E D and cute.

Not going to lie, I’m glad Ms. Parker didn’t have anything to do with winning this title. The amazing thing is that she will be needed next year because the Aces are the target now.

No WNBA team has ever threepeated and I believe that they can do it. They’re so amazingly fun to watch and they are so good. Congrats!

Now Victor and my Spurs? Yeah, tons of fun already after a few games. I have no idea if they’ll make the playoffs but they sure will upset and make things difficult for a lot of teams out there. This man is so quick and long, it is completely a cheat code, as basketball’s field and basket size were designed for 5’9 folks, not 7’15 mfs. But whatever. The rest of the team is solid and as usual with San Antonio, is progressing rapidly and constantly.

I’m running and shooting at 6:30am these days. Swishing while the sun is rising. It’s a great feeling.

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Me Myself&I

Indeed

Saw a woman with a shirt that said “sk8 fast & eat ass” and I agree.

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Me Myself&I

cyberfold

Dear future,

That’s it! 2023-24 is the start of something different. Everything can be faked online and robots can do super complex stuff offline, like driving nicely through traffic.

We can fake what we see and what we hear enough to believe it, especially for anyone born 2000 and beyond. Folks who don’t have the analog ear, when faking a voice was just not possible at all. People who didn’t experience the transformation of Photoshop and digital editing.

I just read about a young man who creates AI porn stars, buys IRL videos of models, deepfakes those with his AI stuff and sells those packages as chatbots to other young dudes I guess. The insanity. The implications.

It’s just that seeing Waymo cars every single time I go out now —I’ll probably try one sooner than later—, using ChatGPT daily… The before and after those things that didn’t exist a few years ago. I’m pondering.

It induces a pretty drastic change of how one understands the world. And where it’s going. It’s nuts. The acceleration.

It’s fucking nuts. And society is all disjointed in the middle of this.

(this is why I preach for individual, sustainable housing; to stay out of the upcoming madness)

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Me Myself&I

DALL-E one year later

So that was last year, right?

Now same prompt:

Closer:

I mean Jesus Christ. August 2022 to October 2023 and it’s THAT much better. Harriet? Bet:

I only added she’s smiling to the prompt. Here’s the other version DALL-E gave me:

“Get in son we going back to Cali Cali!”

I’m speechless. It’s just a new plateau for human beings and it’s kind of changing everything. And don’t forget: this is getting better all the time, 24/7 and probably increasing every metrics by 3 to 20x every year.

I urge y’all to demand UBI, I swear.

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Me Myself&I

Moved

Anyway. I moved! I’m still in the logistics madness but it’s getting quieter.

The new crib is still in flux but it’s getting there. It’s dope, it’s going to be even better and I’m making this end of the year as sweet as possible.

Moving is always hard but the interesting thing is that it makes us make decisions, right now. Which item is going to be useful, when, should it be at the bottom of a box or in the bag pack ready to roll? It depends. Right now I thought my small speaker wouldn’t be important and I’ve been looking for it for a couple hours although headphones are just fine too.

It makes me ponder a lot. How much space do we actually need per person? Isn’t some outdoor personal space super essential even though we dismiss it all the time? What is really useful in a bedroom? Isn’t a big room where you also sleep in, better than a dedicated room mostly for sleep? We can never be in two rooms at the same time, we’re individuals in flesh.

I’m thinking super-insulated small units would save us and the world, helping us to redesign the bigger spaces so that we’re building healthier and less wasteful societies. Good challenges to tackle, I’d say.

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Me Myself&I

When it’s fall 2023

And you hear some nasty coughing in the grocery store two aisles away, though it might be closer: