Blogroll

This is a list of posts I read and enjoyed. Some may have my thoughts below the post.

Visit my raindrop.io collections for more things to do on the internet today.

In June 2026 I created a separate page for the AI related links but the Jan - April links are still on this page.

^ Really interesting thoughts about a magic button. I wouldn't push it. I wish I had many bodies, not another wrong one.

^ this is a great description of what I was feeling and noticing when I decided to stop using social media. but I do want to say, even after I stopped using social media, I still did this just with different apps that had different purposes.

what I have found to be really helpful is to move the icons around a lot. anytime I catch myself doing this, I move my icons around and it stops. just having a minor inconvenience like that can interrupt that mindless flow that your fingers and brains have learned.

removing certain apps definitely helps, but it doesn't take away the desire or automatic actions. you're still going to seek that feeling somewhere. it's a long journey from here after you start noticing that stuff, but it's definitely helpful to keep noticing.

^ templates are my jam!

^ I love this perspective. it's always good to remember, for people like me who do stuff like this, that what you're responding to is a single post. you are not responding to the whole of a person. and in my case, I often respond based entirely on my own context, not based on any assumptions I'm making about the original author. they said something that made me think something so I put it on this page. to me this is more like a microblog where I share thoughts that spring from other posts, less like commentary on other bloggers as individuals.

but that doesn't mean that someone else isn't interpreting me in certain ways, so it is still important to remember to be careful how I talk about other posts. certainly, my first stream of consciousness thought does not consider their point of view very well, because I'm always wrapped up in what it made me think of. sometimes my responses have little to do with the post and more to do with what it made me think about.

^ I know that I keep a separate AI blog post roll but this is so important I really need to boost it.

^ mail is so cool and it's so cool that it makes us feel things.

^ sentiments like "it's on my Instagram" are part of why I left social media. I thought that it meant people would update me about their lives more often outside of social media but actually what happens is that they still say that and then they follow it with "oh yeah I forgot you're not on there." so while l I thought that getting off social media would make me feel more connected, it really has only made me feel more connected to myself. if all your friends are still using regularly, they're not sharing outside of it.

^ this post is full of love and it made me happy to read!

^ did this person read my mind? I've been playing drums for almost 10 years and I still can't figure out how to write music or even just mess around. I've just gained so much perspective reading this. and now I have a couple directions to point myself. also I would love for people to make more drumless jam tracks 😭 there are a lot on YouTube but it's like one per music style.

^ I love stuff like this but it misses out on some points. sure maybe the reason people back then brushed their teeth every day was because of marketing... but a large part of the reason that we do it now is because of the nature of the food we eat, processed sugar and carbohydrates. what was once marketing for vanity is now necessity for tooth, gum, and heart health.

^ Thoughts like this are what got me back into studying. Now I study. I've only been doing it for a few months but I've learned so many things. (I've also forgotten a lot but since it's written down I can refer to it later so that's ok.) It's a good energy to invest in learning and sure it's a lot of effort/time but it's totally worth it. If you're reading this and thinking this, I encourage you to learn about the things you feel the yearning for!

^ As a non-academic working at a university and being exposed to conversations about learning science, I endorse this message.

^Me writing about my exes

^ I see myself in this post and I love it.

^ Felt. seems like a lot of people bring up this topic in particular when they're trying to convince me that I have mental illness and agender experiences are not valid, but I don't experience menstruation the same way they do. it's just something my body does, like sometimes it gets hungry. sometimes it gets tired. sometimes a flood of blood gushes out and drains all my energy. That's something that happens to some bodies but not others and to me that has nothing to do with their gender either.

^ a beautiful reply to one of my posts.

^ based on my experience alone, the whole contradictory beliefs = no self-awareness argument rose around the same time that internet extremeism became popular (uncoincidentally, algorithms started driving the internet around that time). it's very human to have contradictory beliefs, and most extremists have them too, they just push them down or ignore them. for example, you see a lot of people who are antisocial media, but who still use Reddit. That's contradictory, but it's layered and textured. contradiction is not bad. it's human. if we were all binary, life would be so boring.

but extremism demands ideological purity, and apparently this is the world that people prefer right now. which is a little contradictory, because a lot of those people also miss the internet pre 2016, before algorithmic bias dictated a lot of what we saw. but pre 2016, binary thinking was not an expectation. extremism was an outlier.

and now it's even worse. AI doesn't like to take sides so people are starting to make blog posts that if you don't take sides that's another sign that you have written with AI.

so here's my little quote in support of the post I linked:

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) (Walt Whitman)

contradictory beliefs aren't the problem. The loss of nuance is.

^ a few times one of my old managers asked me to make slide decks and I assumed that meant that they wanted me to do a demo so I did. each time, they were like, "thanks for the demo! going above and beyond!" I was so confused. It took me a while to learn this, that people use slide decks as communication.

^ #2 had me feeling some way because in 2022 one of my friends told me they felt distant due to the fact that I was spending more time on a different social media site than the one they were always on.

^ I think this post provides very good examples and explains very well why I made an executive decision to keep myself out of the comments. not just in blogs, but across the internet. first of all, I started seeing those patterns in my posts, and that was alarming. secondly, even if you just read and don't interact it sours your mood! maybe some people are immune to picking up vibes but I rarely walked away from an online comment interaction feeling good about myself.

^ fuck yeah cloud facts! as a skywatcher myself, I know alarmingly little about what I'm seeing.

^ agree 💯 I had a twitter post go viral once (pre-X) and this describes the experience pretty well. it's not fun.

^ One of the most valuable things that I have learned about writing user guides is to never call anything easy or simple. You will make your reader feel so dumb if they can't figure it out. And the LAST THING you want is for a reader to come into every doc feeling insecure about their ability to understand it, because that'll cloud their interpretations and make them question their judgment.

^ I'm non-binary and I know I have dysphoria which I've tried to explain before, but never successfully. This is not equivalent to my experience but it still hit me in a certain way and I think reading about other people's experiences, when they are open to share them, is important.

^ as a ghost myself this made me beam! a literal picture of me liking your posts on bearblog.

^ Getting off social media for me was multi faceted but in my years off I never really thought about it from this perspective though, how it looks like an abusive relationship from the outside. It really kind of does. I remember people telling me they couldn't get on TikTok because it would feel like cheating on Instagram.

^ I just compiled an itenetary notebook for a trip to Ireland and now I'm thinking I should make a minizine instead??

^ I don't agree with the notion that punctuality shows value, it depends on the kind of person you are and the kind of people you surround yourself with. There are plenty of groups of time blind friends who don't give a shit if their friends are late (because it's not an important thing to them to be on time, other things take precedence). "Value" and what shows value are defined entirely by each person and there is no universal definition. (unless you're talking about incredibly basic needs like water and food.) Social language is defined by culture, expectations, experiences, and needs. On the flip side, this is beautifully written and I think the way that it's written, it can be applied as a metaphor in many scenarios about many things, and it touched me.

^ Convenience is a lie! Inconvenience is intimacy.

^ I love this post and what it's discussing! and it's not just software or automated processes. people seem to adopt this idea that we need to be efficient and productive in everything we do and they get really frustrated when you're not. for example, sometimes a transportation service will make a phone app where you can put your card and then you don't have to carry a physical card. people who prefer the phone method get frustrated with people who prefer the card method. I've seen it and been a victim of it as a card person myself! it's very interesting how that shows up in different ways, the idea that efficiency is more important than anything else and should be achieved at all costs.

^ I'm currently drafting a post about how AI is neurotypical and exceedingly frustratingly so. Sort of related to this post, at least in terms of talking to someone with a weird tone and style of language. I'm really glad to see that I'm not the only person annoyed by it.

^ As a universal donor I feel this.

^ these tips also apply in customer service when you have to educate people about things

^ I'm less educated on game design and experiences so I am loving seeing everyone's knowledgeable Tomodachi Life posts! Monster Hunter mentioned in this one.

^ 💯 especially as we move into flexible pricing where AI capabilities will be able to predict based on your history how much you would be willing to subscribe for something. It's going to give you prices that you don't think about and then it'll be just like any other subscription you currently have, racking up the bills in incremental ways. But the truth is, most people using AI can simply learn moderation and continue the conversation tomorrow.

^ this is so simple but frankly so inspiring. sometimes I think about this when I take my walks, I see so many colors. I think about how I saw red orange and yellow and now I'm seeing green but I didn't take pictures of the first three. I love the idea of targeting one or two colors. I also really love how this blog post looks with the tint of those colors across it.

^ I love little observations like this! I started keeping my phone face down to help me ignore notifications when I was trying to detach from excessive phone usage and it just became what I do now. I can't give you a current reason, it just feels weird to set it down face up. But in my last couple of relationships, they interpreted phone face down as cheating behavior. Why are you trying to hide who's texting you?

^ I love a thoughtful Monster Hunter post! I got real excited and I want to make sure I keep track of this blog in case they talk about Monster Hunter again.

^ this is a concern that I've also had, and I've been accused of using AI in comments and writings before. because I use the three phrase thing, sometimes structure my sentences similarly, and use headings to break up my thoughts. well, I'm a technical writer, I'm very well versed in chunking information and creating headings. anyway, I really like this post and the reminder to not really give a fuck and keep writing!

^ Fun little celebration of spring in the start of this post 🏵️

^ At first the thought of this made me laugh a little because I went to school during a time when only a few people had laptops in class, much less phones or tablets... we are truly in a different era (and I am old). I wanted to share because it's thoughtful and links to other interesting articles to explore.

^ This is a constant struggle as a documentarian. I want to show my life, share it, manipulate the results of it into zines and videos and creative things. But I also want to make sure I am still there living it. To me, it's not phone specific. I also had this thought/conflict pre-phones-in-pockets, when I'd leave my house with a notebook and write what I'm observing instead of observing, then writing. It's technology, not apps, that keep me from fully experiencing. But this post is about apps and it brings a unique thought to the idea of certain technology being the reason we do stuff.

^ Yes! As we move into using AI at work and it's part of the expectation of working.. This is always on my mind. Some people think you can "do anything" with AI. But like anything else: if you want to produce a well rounded thing, you must already have domain knowledge for that thing.