Today I listened to two very interesting, mind challenging podcast episodes that I’d like to share with you. Both are interviews done by Bari Weiss for the Honestly Podcast at The Free Press.
Paul Kingsnorth
The Story of Someone Who Changed His Mind
It’s a conversation with former activist, still writer and enviromentalist, new born orthodox christian (yes, all that) Paul Kingsnorth. His views challenged lots of my beliefs, and the thing is that they make a lot of sense and made me think a lot and want to read more about and from him.
Batya Ungar-Sargon
How the Working Class Became America’s Second Class
This episode features Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon, whom I didn’t know either. Very, very thought provoking views, strongly based on her own journalistic research across the US. I may not agree with many of the thoughts she states as facts, but she certainly makes many interesting points about how the left has gone elitist and how a populist (in my opinion) like Trump is connecting with the hard working people in America.
Today I thought that I can do a good work in my profession and I can make four people in this world feel loved. And I guess that’s it.
Day 8. #mbapr This is the closest thing I found for prevention in my photo roll. I wanted to remember the parking spot, so there’s a preventive picture.
I’m making a bold move in my social networking workflow, inspired by these two posts by @moonmehta: this one and this other one.
I have unfollowed everybody in Micro.blog (after backing up the follow list, just in case I need to go back (You can do this by Exporting Follows in your Fediverse details in the Accounts section). and then subscribed everybody back via RSS (I use NetNewsWire for this).
The https://micro.blog/posts/user format (no .json nor .xml extension, just the plain user name) lets you subscribe to both posts AND replies of a certain user. Every post they publish and every reply they send, regardless of the recipient (I even found out that this format https://micro.blog/posts/'mastodon user' lets me subscribe to any Mastodon account via RSS).
The idea is twofold. On one hand, I limit even more the addictive nature of every social network, even a one like Micro.blog, limited-by-design. My Micro.blog timeline will not show my follow’s posts anymore, so I won’t need to be checking the web or the app like I used to do with Twitter and I still do with Micro.blog. That should help me own even more the time I give to my digital stuff.
On the other hand, scrolling down the timeline wouldn’t guarantee that I’d read every post from my follows, and I’d miss many of them. Having them in NetNewsWire will assure that I can read every post and reply and I won’t miss my favorite people’s insights.
I have started subscribing to 75 RSS feeds. This might change. I might see that I want to receive updates from a smaller number of people. Or I might like the system and follow even more people this way. I have 3.750 unread posts right now, so the Mark All As Read feature is going to be very handy in the beginning, and probably down the road too.
Engaging with the posts and replies might be a bit cumbersome. When I see a post I want to reply to, NetNewsWire opens the original blog. If the blog has the “Comment on Micro.blog” feature, it’s easy to reply to. If not, it’s a bit more difficult. Replies are opened directly in Micro.blog, so that’s not an issue. I’ll see how it goes.
So here’s a new try in my blogging/social networking journey. I want to write more and scroll less; I want to engage in meaningful conversations and read everything from the people I like. Above all, I want to own the experience and the time.
And one added benefit: this RSS feed https://micro.blog/feeds/eumrz.json now gives me my posts and the replies I receive from other people. That’s very cool. Thanks to Jatan for the idea.
xkcd: Machine
Please, do yourself a favor and go check this awesome proposition from XKCD. I need to work a little and I have to leave it for now, because otherwise I can fall in this rabbit hole for ages. If you got a few hours to spare, don’t miss it. Or else, bookmark it.
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It’s easy to generate a UUID in Terminal: simply type
uuidgen
and that command tool will return a fresh UUID as its response, neatly formatted using the standard layout. There are also equivalent calls available to software through the UUID structure in the macOS Foundation API. You can use those to verify that UUIDs generated close together in time are actually very different indeed.
I don’t know what I need this for, nor whether I will ever remember I bookmarked it, but it looks cool and I have the feeling some day it might pay off to keep it. #geekery
📸 Day 6: windy as suggested by @miraz #mbapr
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At times I feel trapped between the two. Every day, whether I’m writing, coding or designing, a part of me strives for perfection while another is painfully aware that perfection is a mirage. What looks perfect now won’t look perfect tomorrow. I grow, I evolve, I change and my definition of perfection evolves with me.
It’s uncanny how much I identify with so many of Manu’s #thoughts
Day 4: foliage, suggested by @pratik. I had to add some fruit to the foliage, my friend. Fruit that makes a very fine white wine, Txakoli ;-)
Day 3: Card. #mbapr Cards describing the properties of spices at an Epicerie in Donibane Garazi, Navarre, Pays Basque, south of France.
📸 Day 2: Flower.
Flowers on a wall in Cadaqués. I took the picture two years ago, and today I’m going back. Happy.
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I want to laugh, but: If Trump is elected again in November — which, based on the close results of 2016 and 2020, and the current polling data, is definitely possible — shaking down lobbyists and foreign governments with exorbitant rates for ads on Truth Social seems like a much better grift than running a hotel across the street from the White House. A corrupt president owning a social media site would be a grift that scales. If there’s any rational reason for Trump Media to have any value at all, it’s that. It’s worthless today, but could be a veritable goldmine in a second Trump administration.
It’s all so scary, guys. Please, please elect the boring old guy, for fuck’s sake. #thoughts
Apple CEO Tim Cook for Associated Press: “Enough DMA. We’re pulling out of the EU”. #Applexit
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Here’s a letter he wrote to The Kansas City Star in 1993 in response to school children writing letters to try and pressure MTV to drop Beavis and Butthead.
I loved reading this emotional post by @bradbarrish about his father. Please go read the whole thing, and especially the letter the former quote is about. Mr. Barrish was Brad’s best friend, and he was a true free speech champion for all of us. Very necessary in these times of turmoil. #thoughts