One Man's notebook this week.
Today is Blue Monday, which is a myth, invented by the marketing team for a travel company.
Have a great, productive day! 😉
Oh, flip, I’m out of coffee beans. 😱
Great analysis of why the current New Yorker cover is so powerful: 1000 words.
Silicon Valley and crypto culture’s embrace of Trump has changed his cultural meaning more than Democrats have recognized. In 2016, Trump felt like an emissary of the past; in 2025, he’s being greeted as a harbinger of the future.
The better the Apple product, the more shamelessly it gets copied. Apple should make Clips into an iOS video editing app that everyone rips off shamelessly.
My daughter’s friends refer to videos as “CapCuts” or “edits” (hence the name of the new Instagram editing app). That an entire form of media is associated with a firm’s product is profoundly worrying.
Two of my least favourite aspects of social media are witch-hunting individuals and guilt by association. If you’re going to go after someone’s livelihood, I suggest you come with the “receipts” (as the kids say).
(What’s the micro.blog version of subtweeting? Submicroing?)
It’s fascinating watching the ban on links to X spread, virally, from subreddit to subreddit.
If I need something that does have answers that can be definitely wrong in important ways, and where I’m not an expert in the subject, or don’t have all the underlying data memorised and would have to repeat all the work myself to check it, then today, I can’t use an LLM for that at all.
We’re unprepared for computers that can be unpredictably wrong, because that’s not our pre-existing experience.
There’s a very good reason that witch hunts and lynch mobs are replaced with legal process, courts and standards of evidence and punishment in civilised societies.
It seems clear that we need to learn this lesson all over again online, if we’re to carry on forming meaningful communities there.
I have written over 2,000 words inspired by, but addressing larger issues than, the current clash between micro.blog and omg.lol staff.
I’m not sure I’ll ever publish it. But I’m glad I wrote it, because it helps clarify my own thinking.
Community Management
Micro.blog needs a community manager again. If it's going to aspire to be a community, not just a platform, then community management is needed.
In a situation like we've just been through over the last couple of days, a community manager's role would be to act, as far as possible, as a mediator between the community and @manton.
I know this won't be a particularly welcome thought at a time when it looks like micro.blog's income has just take a hit. (A number of people I follow have left, but I have no idea how widespread this is, a side-effect of the structures of micro.blog I value). But I think it's the way forward.
I am immensely sad that the situation around micro.blog has accelerated as far and as fast as it has. I'm disappointed that opportunities to de-escalate and resolve it have been missed. I'm gutted that people whose presence here I value have decided to move on.
I'm stepping away from the timeline for a wee while (although will probably be posting links and photos). I'll let this long piece (posted elseblog, so as to not shove it too much into the face of the community here) about the broader issue of how we deal with problems online stand as my explanation of why.
Over the past two years, a set of massively popular podcasters and streamers cemented themselves as the new mainstream source of information for millions of young men, and, according to a new Bloomberg analysis, used their perch to rally these constituents in support of Trump and the political right.
There’s a new mainstream media and I don’t think journalism as a profession is anywhere near adjusting to this reality.
55% of respondents to the question ‘What do you use Bluesky for?’ said it was a mix of three research-related activities: to connect with other scientists, keep up to date with other research or researchers, and promote their own research
I'm not saying AI is Apple's achilles heel.
But…
I’ll start sounding like a broken record but, at this point, I don’t care: social media was and still is a mistake. Enough people all bunched together in the same space with the ability to quickly interact with each other will produce more harm than good.
Rebecca Solnit: How to Comment on Social Media:
Also you have the right to check their papers, as in to demand they prove to you their commitments and beliefs, and their unwillingness to do so on demand is a sign of culpability too. Have they properly condemned the recent something or other? It is not your job to find proof; it is this complete stranger’s obligation to offer it up, and there is no reason they would not if they were not guilty as charged. Condemn them for insufficient condemnation issuance.
This is amazingly funny, but you’re a better person than I if you don’t wince, too.
Started reading: Visualizing Nature by Stuart Kestenbaum 📚
Picked it up cheap in an Islington bookshop. Looking forward to it.
A winged maple seed fell from a tree, landing on the page of the book I was reading. The world was going about the work at hand. Survival and renewal were literally in the air.
From the introduction to Visualizing Nature edited by Stuart Kestenbaum 📚
It’s normally late February or March before we dig the bikes out, but today was such a lovely, mild sunny day, we dragged them out of the garage, pumped the tyres and went for a cycle up and round the fort.
Beach sunset.
Sunrise up on the Downs.
This week’s swimming lessons inspiration.
