Unattributed

Bridge heading into the smokey landscape. License: CC-0

I read Brennan Kenneth Brown's What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really?, and found myself writing a lengthy response. But, after I wrote my response I reread Brennan's article and found myself in a bit of a quandary. I found myself asking a simple question: was it intentional that he presented both arguments and counterarguments in his piece? That seemed to have a simple answer: yes.

Any good piece of writing should undertake to present the relevant perspectives, and treat them seriously. But this is where I stumbled to understand Brennan's position. While he presented the counterpoints, or counterarguments to these positions, he didn't seem to treat them in the same manner as his primary arguments and points. That has caused me to think about his article from a different perspective.

What Was the Purpose

There is a statement, or rather a question, that forms the premise of Brennan's argument about Personal Knowledge Management:

Obsidian has been out for six years now—has there been an increase in public-facing understanding and knowledge?

That is a question that, the more that I look at it, seems completely wrong. It's taking the idea of a single piece of technology, a single application, and asking what that tool has contributed to the world. How does anyone measure what the contribution of a piece of software is to the world?

Take for example a couple of applications that have been around for many more decades than Obsidian: Emacs and vim. Have Emacs and vim contributed to “public-facing” understanding or knowledge? No, they haven't. However, what they have enabled people to do a lot of things: write code, programs, applications, papers, documents, books, poems, and a lot more.

The tool doesn't make the contribution. The tool enables people to make contributions to the world. But Brennan goes on to double down:

I think it's safe to say that, while there have always been courses and lessons on productivity people sell and buy, the unique values and principles of Obsidian (local plain-text files written in Markdown, data privacy, portability, “future-proofing,” etc.) give the ideas and the people behind them a certain higher-brow purpose and epistemological value.

And this is where the wheels come completely off the train. Basically nothing about the linked document supports the statement that Brennan is making. The page in question does not mention: data privacy, portability, or “future-proofing.” What it does suggest is, “We believe in plain text for something as important as your knowledge base. […] When the file system replaces the cloud, you get flexible options to work with your files: you can back them up with Dropbox, use Git to do versioning, or encrypt your disk for security. Whatever works on your file system will work on your Obsidian knowledge base.” There is no hint at the concepts being “higher-brow” or anything to indicate an ascribed “epistemological value.”

Instead, the core argument the Obsidian team makes is nearly the opposite:

Note-taking is a highly personal activity. Naturally there is no single all-encompassing solution for everyone.

Instead of providing you with an opinionated and assembled product, Obsidian gives you a foundation and numerous functional building blocks to discover and build your own solution.

The foundation is to be able to view files, edit them, and search them. For the minimalist, that's enough.

So where Brennan came up with all of this “future-proofing” and “highbrow” and “epistemological value” is minimally unclear, and maximally misleading. Obsidian is just a tool. A tool that is designed for users to create the system they want or need.

Where I think Brennan has gone wrong with this is reading or watching what others have said about Obsidian as a tool. I have seen this ecosystem that seems to have developed around Obsidian, and honestly it is quite off-putting. But should we judge a tool by its users? Or should it be judged based on what it's developers have provided?

I think I am going to side with the developers on this one.

Brennan then posits his central thesis a second time:

My concern is in the lack of critical examination of what these complex, robust systems are producing: Has there been a meaningful increase of understanding and creation thanks to personal knowledge management systems? This is the question I want to investigate and try to answer.

I do wonder what “complex, robust systems” he means at this point. He's only mischaracterized Obsidian, which certainly at its core is not all that complex. It's a personal Wiki with a few extra features. Wikis have existed since 1994 when Ward Cunningham developed the first one (which was installed online in 1995).

Believe it or not, we haven't even gotten to the meat of Brennan's article yet. This article is so dense with information that it's going to take a lot of work to go through and pull it apart for a clear examination.

Personal Knowledge Management Systems

After providing a list of PKM's (most notable of which are PARA, Johnny Decimal, Zettelkasten, GTD, and Commonplace Books), Brennan sets out a series of questions for the examination of these systems:

1. First, what does it mean to make an important and meaningful contribution to our understanding of the world?
2. Second, are PKM frameworks being used by those making important, meaningful contributions in fields of academia and communications? By communications, I mean synthesizing the understanding of expert-domains so these discoveries can be understood and shared among everyone instead of gatekept by elitism.
3. Third, what does the process actually look like for the actual people who write important papers and books?
4. Fourth, what is the throughput and output of the people who have dedicated themselves to PKM frameworks?

This series of questions, in itself, is something of a mess. The first question doesn't have any relationship to personal knowledge management. What a person contributes to the world isn't measured by their ability to store or regurgitate information. Making an “important and meaningful contribution” is a highly nebulous concept that is dependent on the audience and the author.

The second question is a complete shift in scope. Making “important, meaningful contributions” to academia and communications is not the same as making a contribution to “our understanding of the world”. And then there's this: “…shared among everyone instead of gatekept by elitism.” To many, academia is quite literally a form of elitism that gate keeps information. (Aside: I could make a long argument here about what happened to Aaron Swartz in his attempt to liberate the information that was being gate kept by academia.)

Third question: surely it looks like whatever works for them, right? I mean, this is what the promise of Obsidian is in the first place: “Note-taking is a highly personal activity. Naturally there is no single all-encompassing solution for everyone.” If someone wants to use PARA, they use PARA. If they want to invent their own system (spoilers) then they will do so. Again, how is this relevant? Is a person's choice of system indicative or predictive of their ability to perform some task?

The fourth question is, possibly, the most valuable, and yet the most difficult. How do you know what people are choosing to use for their knowledge management? How does someone measure “throughput and output”? Certainly you can perform a quantitative analysis of this, however assessing the qualitative nature of this question is far more difficult.

Next we talk about German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, whose Zettelkasten system has become widely known, and is frequently cited as a “genius” method for organizing one's notes or information. Brennan here thinks of this as a “Myth” because no one has been able to take Luhmann's notes and create new works based on them. People have realized that his system was idiosyncratic to Luhmann himself. But does that make his methodology a “myth?” I don't think so, it just means his method was specific to him.

The Questions

At this point Brennan starts going through the questions that he outlined (as quoted above), only there's a bit of goal shifting here. For example, question one is now stated as “What counts as a meaningful contribution to understanding?” Before it had to be both “important and meaningful” and it had to apply to “our understanding of the world”. But, nonetheless, let's continue. Brennan states:

The empirical literature on insight and creativity centers on incubation, the act of stepping away from a problem, unconscious restructuring, working memory offloading. This is not the act of browsing a hyperlinked card catalog.

Incubation is, quite literally, a portion of the process that systems like PARA (Forte, Tiago. Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. Vol. 1. Simon and Schuster, 2022.) actually supports. In Chapter 3, he quite clearly states:

There are four essential capabilities that we can rely on a Second Brain to perform for us:

1. Making our ideas concrete
2. Revealing new associations between ideas.
3. Incubating our ideas over time.
4. Sharpening our unique perspectives.

(Emphasis added.)

The understanding is that this is very much in line with the ideas that works about insight and creativity have suggested. This isn't just spending time “browsing a hyperlinked card catalog.” It's storing information such that it can be found when it is needed and additional information might surface during the process that allows intuitive leaps in problem-solving. This whole concept is completely in line with the papers being cited.

And then Brennan disproves his whole point by pointing to a paper: Scholars ARE Collectors: A Proposal for Re-thinking Research Support which makes the point that academics are “hoarders” of information. And they organize and interact with this information in their own way. In other words: they make intuitive leaps through use of hoarded information.

The next question, “Are PKM frameworks used by people making real contributions, or mostly by people selling PKM?” is completely different from the one listed in the beginning of the article: “Second, are PKM frameworks being used by those making important, meaningful contributions in fields of academia and communications? By communications, I mean synthesizing the understanding of expert-domains, so these discoveries can be understood and shared among everyone instead of gatekept by elitism.”

Seriously? How does the literal questions keep changing this much? The first question mostly in scope. But now, the second question doesn't even match between statements of the question. I think I know why this happening, which I will explain towards the end of this article. For now, we'll talk about the revised question.

Brennan notes that there is a whole market of people selling books, courses, and other materials about PKM. And, makes note that it is likely that those who are writing and doing training about it are not likely applying their teachings.

Honestly, I don't know that this is really an issue. There are people that get into many lines of work, including things like life trainers, gym trainers, motivational speaking, etc. What works for one person may not work for another person. Listing off a bunch of people that don't use a system doesn't disprove the system, it only shows that there are other methods that can be used.

The part that I think was hilarious about this section was the “gotcha” Brennan tries to make of this post on the Obsidian forum. The way the original poster made his post, it's obvious that he was trying to promote his own book, and his website. But then one respondent posts a literal bibliography of at least fifty works the original poster didn't reference. The clear implication of this post: the original poster is unqualified in the field, he hasn't done his research. And yet, here we are, using this post where someone is debunking the original poster as an example.

Okay, on to the third question:”What does the process actually look like for people who write important books?” Hey, what do you know: this time the questions actually match!

Now, while I love to examine the processes of others when possible to glean any insights I can from them, and possibly integrate some of their concepts into my own, I don't see how this proves anything. Just because people that are highly successful, or are high functioning in their field don't adopt a PKM methodology or specific tool is no reflection on the methodology or the tool. It's just a matter of the person having found the tools and methods that work for them.

So, let's look at this statement from Brennan:

The analogue systems used by demonstrably prolific working writers are project-bounded and disposable. The digital PKM ideology sells the opposite promise of a permanent, ever-growing, cross-project system that gets more valuable the longer you maintain it.

Are the analogue systems always project-bounded? There are many times when fiction writers have started developing some idea or concept for a work, but found that it didn't fit the story they wanted to tell. So, do they just throw it away? No. They put it aside someplace only to be retrieved when it fits in the story they are writing.

The PKM system, on the whole, is about building a knowledge base, basically a library of knowledge that you can pull from. When you have a specific project, you pull the information that fits specifically within the scope of the project you are working on. This is basically no different from going to a library and gathering research materials. Just because a library has hundreds of thousands of books that don't apply to your field doesn't mean those books don't have value. There are likely books that don't fit in your field of study that still have value to you for other reasons.

Singling out three or four people that have processes that are completely different from PKM method doesn't disprove anything about PKM methods. It just shows that those methods don't work for them.

Okay, on to the last question: “What is the actual throughput of people dedicated to PKM?” Originally this was stated as “throughput and output” but now the scope is narrowed to “throughput”. And, what exactly is “throughput?” Is that quantifiable or measurable? Output could be quantified or measured: X number of articles, Y number of books, Z number of videos… More importantly, one could consider the potential impact based of their work product based on their relevance as measured by following.

The example given in this section is of Theo Stowell, someone who has been writing about PKM and using Obsidian for several years, and now is supposedly developing a new tool. How relevant is he? Well, the highest number of followers for Theo I could find was on Medium, where he has 1.8K followers. Everywhere else I looked (YouTube, Instagram, Substack) he had well below 1K followers, and in many cases well below 500 followers.

Now, how big is Obsidian? On Obsidian's own website, they indicated there were around 750K downloads by 2022. The most recent estimate I could find of Obsidian's distribution was in this Fueler article, which states there are between 1-1.5 million copies of Obsidian out there.

So, I don't understand the example of Theo Stowell, he doesn't seem to represent a significant presence in the Obsidian community considering there are plugins with well over 1 million downloads (23 as of this writing).

Now, we know that there is a big market around self-help, personal-development market. And organization systems, methods, and tools is a part of this market. But, honestly, it's not as big as it might seem. Tiago Forte, the most notable name in the PKM had a revenue of about $2.4M from his “Building a Second Brain” book. But when all the expenses were factored in, he netted approximately $1.26M. That is on the sale of 500K books.

Sure that sounds like a decent chunk of change, but in a market worth somewhere around $46 Billion in 2025, $2.4M is a fairly small amount compared to the potential. Obsidian is very difficult to estimate, but based on the referenced Fueler article, its revenue is somewhere between $5M and $25M annually. And even that is still a fairly small amount when compared to the overall industry.

Where Did Brennan's Article Go Wrong?

When I started the first draft of this response, I was stymied by how so much of the article had gone so wrong. I was thinking, “I don't know how I can ever explain this.” But, then, just when I thought I was going to have to say “I don't know” an article popped up on Bubbles that provided some insight: People and Blogs: Brennan Kenneth Brown. In particular, there is a segment about Brennan's writing process where he points to a post on his own site: My Blogging Workflow: A routine for nearly a post a day for 4 months straight., wherein he talks about how he handles the research parts of his posts:

Regardless of my focus or topic, I go as fast as possible, as I want to reach 750 words in around 20 minutes, though sometimes it takes much longer.

How do I have articles heavy with links and stats and quotes from others if I'm writing so quickly? When I'm writing a research-heavy essay or commentary, I'll put something in brackets with TK and return back to it in the editing process so I don't slow down with the writing.

Rightly, he points out, this is a practice from journalism, as journalists are frequently writing in the field and don't have access to the research materials. But, there is a pitfall to this process: in trying to write and edit articles quickly, it can lead to poorly done research. And that is what appears to have happened with this article. Many of the cited (aka linked) articles, papers, and websites are inconclusive in relationship to their supposed point. In some cases they don't support the arguments that are being made at all.

This response post has been a two-day slog for me through all of this, and trying to do some quick research of my own to correct the misleading information in the original article. Indeed, a lot of this is my opinion or my interpretation of the materials that Brennan has placed before his audience. However, it's pretty simple to see that there is a substantial portion of his article that just was not well considered.

Conclusion

And this is where I get to point to a substantial irony in this story. Much of Brennan's issue with PKMs and tools like Obsidian is that we don't see a lot more output from people. That instead, we see quite a few people that have gone the route of trying to become influential in the PKM field, and writing their own books about it (with or without appropriate levels of research).

Brennan himself, has documented that his approach is to write a post every day. He makes it a process by which is tries to write 750 words in 20 minutes. He also notes that he has written quite a few novels, all of which are self-published works.

Personally, all of this is sounding completely backwards from what I was taught to do when writing a research paper. I was always told: come up with a thesis, do the research, and only when the research is complete write the paper. In fact, I was called out several times in school for not having done my research well, and trying to use sources in a narrow manner to prove points that they didn't support. Sound familiar?

I always had the excuse that I was working on a deadline, and I didn't realize the complications that I was going to run into, so I did the best with the materials that I had. But the fact was that I hadn't done the research properly, and I hadn't based my writing on the research. Instead, I went into the writing process trying to prove my thesis correct, even when it was weak or incorrect.

And that's the issue with Brennan's article. There is just a lot of the research that doesn't completely support the underlying statements. And even Brennan knew that he couldn't make the information fit the narrative that he had in his mind when he sat down and started writing. That's why we see things like restatements of questions that have substantial shifts in scope.

In the end, I think Brennan went into his post with good intention. But he became over-ambitious and let the whole thing creep out of his control. However, there is one thing that we both agree on: AI. As he states in his article:

I promise there is a deep debt to be paid if you attempt to offload cognitive labour to a non-deterministic machine, especially if you care about objectivity and facts.

Indeed, AI is no replacement for the labor of actually committing one's own cognitive processes to the page or screen.

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Categories: #Essays Tags: #response, #pkm, #knowledge, #management, #research, #writing, #notes, #notetaking License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

	FediRing
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The latest anti-feature from Automattic—now infecting Gravatar. Photo by: Unattributed, Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Happily Imperfect posted Bye bye Gravatar a short while ago, and I have to say, I've had a similar thought about deleting my account on there as well. My feelings towards WordPress and Automattic started changing some time ago, back when they introduced the Gutenberg editor. Ever since this “improvement” it's been a downhill slide for WordPress to the point where it's become an unusable mess in my opinion.

I know a lot of people also think that Matt Mullenweg's recent statements about WordPress, open source, and other companies have been problematic. I reserve my opinions on those areas. Instead, I am judging the quality of the software and the services that are being produced.

But there is an irony when it comes to Gravatar: even though it serves little purpose in and of itself, it does do one thing: it serves your avatar. I can't say how many times in the past I've logged into some new site / application only to have my avatar automatically populate itself. For a while it was jarring because I hadn't updated Gravatar for years. But at least it was filling in something rather than nothing. And, I felt that something filled a purpose: a consistency of identity across the web.

But, now I wonder about that. I cannot recall the last time my avatar was automatically filled in. The only notable case recently was that my avatar updated automatically on GitHub when I changed it on Gravatar. And, honestly my feelings towards GitHub and Microslop are in the shitter as well. So, there's that.

And now, I have an absolute reason to nuke this f***ing account all to hell. I do NOT EVER consent to ANYTHING being done in regard to AI in my name. There was never any notification sent about this change to Gravatar. Hell, I haven't received any notice of any changes being made to Gravatar in the last 5–10 years. It was a similar change that pushed me over the edge with WordPress, and I feel the same way about it with Gravatar.

I know, they haven't actually sent anything directly to any chatbots on my behalf. But the fact that they saw fit to add this ANTI-feature without announcing it speaks more about where Automattic is in the process of enshittifying their products than anything else. Nope—it's goodbye to any and everything Automattic, including Gravatar.

With newer sites like Bio Link and FediProfile I don't see the usefulness of Gravatar. If anything, I think it now has ANTI-features.

And now Gravatar is gone, kaput, deleted. Goodbye and good riddance.

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Categories: #Rant Tags: #response, #automattic, #ai, #antiai, #nukeittohell License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

	FediRing
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Wolf looking directly into a camera at close proximity.

There is a bit of an issue I have noticed lately: websites actively blocking Reading Mode in Firefox, and derivative web browsers. I was stunned to find out (just a minute ago) that Reading Mode doesn't appear to be a default feature in Chromium, but instead an add-on. So, I don't know if this is an issue for Chrome based browsers.

This is getting frustratingly annoying for me. Why? There are multiple reasons that Reading Mode is a necessity for many people, myself included. Let's talk about a few of them.

Poor Contrast Color Schemes

This is a problem I see a lot with websites, it seems to be a trendy or fashionable aesthetic… Have a light gray background so it's not completely white, then have a “dark” gray for the text. In most cases probably not too bad, but for some people that's not enough contrast. My personal issue seems to be with blue versions of themes with this style.

I understand quite a few people like pastel colored themes. They really do look nice. I have even tried to take some from this aesthetic with my sites: use a medium/neutral background color, light color for the logo and highlights so they aren't overbearing. But, I still maintain a fairly high contrast for the main content.

While sites like this can really look amazing in their simplicity, and soothing color choices, they can be a nightmare from an accessibility standpoint.

Neo-cities Style Sites

I get it, really I do: there is a lot of nostalgia for the 1990s personal websites… Heck there is a lot of nostalgia for anything that is “retro”. That isn't a bad thing. I enjoy websites where personal expression is as important, or sometimes more important than the content.

But, sometimes, we want to read and potentially engage with the owner of the website… Sometimes the retro aesthetics get in the way. When it does, allowing visitors choices in how they engage with your content is necessary.

Tiny and / or Thin Fonts

I don't know what has happened in the last twenty-something years, but somewhere along the way we seem to have gone wrong with fonts. There are a lot of sites that, while they are amazing from an overall aesthetic perspective, have fonts that are either tiny or have very thin strokes.

Personally, I think this is likely due to changes in displays. We have to have our websites look good on many devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, eInk tablets, phones), and under multiple browsers and operating systems. All of these factors can make it difficult to get font choices right. This is especially true when you are trying to make a site that has a clean look, or a professional aesthetic.

This is another reason to allow visitors options for how they view your content.

Audience Vision Differences

I'll hold my hand up here and say this applies to me specifically. I have an issue that is categorized as dyslexia, but isn't typical dyslexia. The problem is my eyes don't synchronize properly all the time. One of the worst is when I am reading. Let me try to explain.

When I read my right eye will move through a line of text more quickly than my left eye. In order to compensate for the difference in speed between them, I slow down my right eye to keep it in sync with my left eye. This issue can be exacerbated by the font and color choices. This was found when I went through a series of tests over forty years ago. (Before anyone asks / comments: no, the “dyslexia font” doesn't help, it makes things worse for me. That font is more for people with issues recognizing letter shapes, or people that tend to recognize letters out of order. I recognize the letters / words / etc. just fine. This is purely an eye muscle / neural control issue.)

More recently, a couple of color blindness tests have shown indications I may be partially color-blind. Not to any significant level, I can still differentiate all colors in the spectrum. Rather some blues may appear more washed out to me than they do to others.

Another, far more common issue is age. As people get older their eyes can become weaker. They need to be able to read sites in as comfortable a manner as possible. The best way for many of them is using Reader Mode. How do I know this? Up until she passed away, I took care of my mother. There were numerous times when she needed to read a website, but had difficulties. I showed her how to use Reader Mode, and helped set it up so it was comfortable for her.

Finishing My Rant

Basically, actively disabling the Reader Mode of any browser is an act of denying someone with a disability access. It's the same as non-disabled asshats parking in the spots reserved for people with disabilities. Or stores / shops that won't provide a ramp for people in wheelchairs or walkers.

While this isn't a super common issue, I've been noticing it more and more lately. Especially with the IndieWeb, where we want people actively reading and interacting with each other.

I noted tonight on one site, an author made a comment about their site potentially being difficult to read. Honestly, the color scheme of the site was difficult for me. But, guess what: I was able to use Reader Mode to read their comment without issue. I wouldn't change their site, it has a really cool semi-retro aesthetic to it. As long as Reader Mode is available, it's accessible for me.

That's all I'm asking for: accessibility.

End rant.

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Categories: #Essays Tags: #accessibility, #readermode, #eyes, #disability, #rant License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

	FediRing
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Two boats docked behind a berm.

Introduction

Many years ago (over a decade) I wrote an article about RSS Feed reader alternatives after Google announced they were killing Reader in March 2013. That article attracted a fair amount of attention, including a request from RedHat to republish the article on their blog. On the ten-year anniversary of the death of Google Reader, the Verge published the article: Who killed Google Reader? (pay-walled article), indicating (to me) that even a decade on there was still interest in these products. Today, with the rising profile of the FediVerse and the IndieWeb, it seems RSS readers and feed aggregation are seeing a bit of a renaissance with the likes of Bubbles. I've also noted several feed reader sites showing up as referrers on my sites.

And, just to make things more interesting, as I was working on the first draft of this piece, Rishabh P. Sharma posted an article on his site called: FreshRSS vs My Own Feed Reader: A fierce competition. I took this as yet another indicator that there is still quite a bit of interest in RSS/Atom Feed Readers.

This started me wondering what is the status of RSS feed readers and other news aggregators these? Are they the technology of a bygone era as once predicted by Google? Or are they still around and thriving as I'm starting to believe from seeing several readers in my websites referrers? Are there any new ones that might be worth looking at? And, most importantly, have they changed?

This Isn't a Roundup Article

The original article I wrote back in 2013 was focused on a simple, and single question: what to do now that Google Reader is going away? Back then, everything was an opportunity for open source alternatives to shine. So, that's how I wrote the article (and why RedHat was interested in it). I provided a roundup of what were the best alternatives that I could find at the time.

Obviously we aren't in 2013 anymore, so it doesn't seem like a roundup article is what is needed. Instead, what I would like to do is examine a few questions:

• Are Feed Readers bygone tech?
• What is RSS, and why is it so heavily used?
• Why would you want to use a feed reader today?
• What are your options for setting up some type of feed reader?
• Are there any interesting, and lesser known options?
• Are there any significant changes since 2013?

These might be more of interest to you today if you don't use, or don't understand why RSS/Atom feed readers are useful.

Tech of a Bygone Era?

From looking around for a bit, I was able to answer Google's prediction: no, RSS/Atom readers and aggregators are definitely not the technology of a bygone era. First, not only do many websites still have RSS/Atom feeds available, but I was able to identify a number of different ways in which they are being used now:

• Websites like Memeorandom, Mediagazer, Techmeme and WeSmirch actually use RSS/Atom feeds in several ways: First, they use feeds from other media outlets to gather current stories. The stories are then aggregated to produce their single-page quick view website. Second, they make RSS feeds available for viewing in a feed reader. Third, they use RSS/Atom feeds to export their content to social media, like the Fediverse. (Aside: they almost make a list of all the feeds they scrape available on the leaderboards, which are part of each site. This is a great way to find a list of feeds if you need one.) Basically, that's a lot of RSS/Atom based tech to produce what is, essentially, a single page website.

• Of course, we have the recent site Bubbles. Bubbles is a website that presents a ranked list of posts from IndieSites that sign up for the service. The use RSS/Atom feeds to populate their lists of articles to Pretty cool stuff, reaching back to the old days of the internet.

• As hinted above, there is a lot of RSS feeds being bridged to the Fediverse. Possibly the biggest / most common are the weather and weather camera feeds. Of course, there is also the ever popular Elon Musk Jet tracker. Fedi Directory has an extensive list of bots on the Fediverse, including many RSS bridging bots.

• Platforms like Mastodon and GotoSocial make public user posts available via RSS. For example, my feed is: Unattributed's GTS Feed. Of course, this can be disabled by users if they don't want their posts published use RSS/Atom. But why use it? It's a good way to archive your posts, especially if you want to implement automatic post deletion application, but might want to keep some of those bangers around to reuse later.

• The most unusual use of RSS/Atom feeds goes to Calibre, which uses them to scan websites and build e-Books for reading offline.

• And, let's not forget podcasts. Lots of podcasting platforms serve RSS/Atom feeds for retrieving shows, and many podcast players use RSS/Atom feeds to retrieve the podcast(s).

Hopefully it's obvious that RSS feeds are not tech from a bygone era. I would say, in fact, that RSS/Atom is literally the protocol that is literally powering a substantial portion of the internet as we know it today.

What Is RSS?

The name RSS has multiple definitions, but for our purposes here, the best is Really Simple Syndication. Its purpose is to provide of stream of updated information from a website. This information can take many forms, and can include different types of media, such as photos, audio files, or video files.

The idea is that a website produces a stream (file) when another application or website sends a query to the site. The stream contains the information that has been updated since the last query. In some cases, the site (or client) may limit the number of items in an update. This is mostly true when the site has a lot of information that is changing very quickly.

The idea that only updated information is sent is what makes RSS flexible and light-weight. Since only a limited amount of information is sent during each query the overhead in processing each request is low.

Applications that receive these updates read them, and then take actions based on the updates. For example, if an update says there is a new article, the application can download that article. This processing includes items like images, video, and audio files.

Why Use an RSS Reader?

RSS readers are convenient. They allow you to keep track of the changes on as many sites as you desire. In most cases, the RSS reader will automatically check for updates on the sites you have specified, at an interval you specify. Most readers also allow you to set an expiry period for the information it gathers.

In addition to these features, many readers include additional features to allow you to tag items, mark items as favorites, or mark them for some other processing. Many times you can also export items to other formats or programs (say a note-taking application like Obsidian or Joplin).

And even more advanced readers will allow you to set up rules to tell the program how to treat items that match a one or more sets of criteria. For example, automatically download podcasts, or tag an item if the title contains a keyword.

This flexibility can allow the user to deal with massive amounts of information in a quick and efficient manner. You can think of a reader like a berm: it provides a barrier between you and the wide ocean of information that is out there on the internet. Inside the berm's perimeter you have your docks organized into bays where each of your boats (ie, website feeds) are docked.

RSS Feed Reader Options

So, time to look at some RSS reader options that you might be interested in. This is not going to be an exhaustive list by any means. I checked out the Wikipedia Comparison of Feed Aggregators list earlier. It's a large list, with a lot of applications that are both maintained and unmaintained, and some applications that probably really shouldn't be on the list.

Instead, I want to focus on different classes of reader applications you might want to consider. We'll talk about the reason(s) why you might want to use each, and These include extensions you can add to your web browser, desktop applications, cloud based applications, and hosting your own RSS aggregation server.

Browser Extensions

If you use a desktop computer or a laptop as your primary computing device, this is the most obvious place to start. Adding an extension to your browser can make your feeds available in a way that smoothly integrates with your current environment. The ones that I would look at are FeedBro, LiveMarks, SlickReader and The RSS Aggregator.

Of all of these readers, LiveMarks is available as both a Firefox and Chrome extension, and is rather unique when it comes to how it works. When you add a site to LiveMarks it creates a folder in your bookmarks with links to all the articles that are in the feed. You open the bookmarks to read the article, which actually literally opens the website web page. This can be nice if there are things about the actual web page that you want to or should see. However, this can also open you up to being tracked by the website, so I would only go this route if you have strong ad block and privacy measures in place.

The (unfortunately named) FeedBro for Firefox, and SlickReader for Chrome are the most traditional RSS feed readers, looking like an email application in your browser. As you add new sites, a folder is created in the application's database. You open an email like view and can scan through and read the entries.

The RSS Aggregator for Chrome differentiates itself a bit by allowing you to interact with your feeds through your choice of a drop-down menu, or an email-like interface. When installed a button is added to your shortcuts which will indicate how many updates there. Clicking the button will show you the feeds you've added, and selecting a feed will show you the updates. From there you can go directly to the article, or mark it off. The one downside to this reader is if you want the Filters, Rules, and Collections features you have to purchase their Plus or Professional version.

Self Hosted

Personally, I think this is where the best options are for aggregating content using RSS feeds. However, the downside is that you need to have some technical skill, and the desire to set up a self-hosting system. This is likely most appealing to people that are already into setting up home labs. However, if you run a Jellyfin server, or other media server, maybe this approach will appeal to you.

There are three options for self-hosting that I am aware of: TTRSS (Tiny Tiny RSS), FreshRSS, and Nextcloud News App. Personally, I ran TTRSS on a server many years ago and absolutely loved it. This was right after the Google announcement that they were discontinuing their reader application. I haven't used FreshRSS, but it looks to be comparable to TTRSS. The Nextcloud News App has the advantage of being available in the Nextcloud App store. If you already have a Nextcloud server set up then this is an obvious choice.

The reason I feel the self-hosted option is the best is that they offer the most flexibility. You can access them through their web based interfaces, or you can use them with standalone applications as clients. In this way no matter what device you are reading on, your clients will always know what you have / haven't read.

Cloud Readers

Right behind the self-hosted options are cloud based feed aggregator / readers. The biggest advantage that these applications have is they often have the work to build large databases of feeds to make available to you. You get to select the feeds that you want to read without having to find and add them to your reader. Often during the account creation process you will be presented with a list choose from.

Some of the most notable cloud based aggregator / readers are: Inoreader, Newsblur, Feedly, FeedMe, FeedLand, and The Old Reader. The (to me at least) downside to many of these sites is that they want a subscription for “advanced” features. The prices and features vary between applications. The plus side of cloud based applications is they often have companion web browser plugins, and standalone cellphone apps.

The most interesting of the cloud based options is FeedLand. This is a platform created by Dave Winer – one of the originators of RSS. His idea is to make a site that is “social” based around newsfeeds. You can share posts from your feed to your own social feed, which others on the site can follow. The site also provides exporting lists of your feeds, which you can use with other feed reader applications. And, best of all, there is no charge for the system.

Another one that is a completely free cloud based platform is FeedMe. I was unaware of it until it showed up in the referrers list in my analytics. It is self-described as a minimalist feed reader, and it is. You add your feeds manually, or using an OPML file if you have one. You can make categories for your feeds, and read them. There is no tagging feature, only a favorite option, and you have to manually mark each item as read (or mark the whole feed as read). There's no option to limit the number of items in a feed, or the age of the items. And there is no option for third party application integration.

Inoreader, Newsblur, and Feedly are all sites that seem to be fairly popular as they are ones that are showing up in my referrers, along with FeedMe.

Desktop Applications

There are a fair number of desktop applications, with a couple of them standing out as being available on many operating systems: RSS Guard is available on Windows, Linux, OS/2, and macOS. Fluent Reader is available on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Communique and NewsFlash are Linux native applications, while Fiery Feeds is available on iOS and macOS. The reason for singling out these applications is they all integrate with the Nextcloud News application.

Notably, RSS Guard also integrates with Tiny Tiny RSS and Feedly.

As I mentioned in the Tech of a Bygone Era section, Calibre can take your RSS feeds and produce e-Books from them, which turns them into a magazine-like reading experience. There are also a couple of desktop email applications that include support for reading RSS feeds: Thunderbird and Claws Mail. While Claws Mail is a Linux based application, Thunderbird is available on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

All of these applications should be able to import OPML files, if you decide to move from one reader to a desktop application.

iOS and Android Applications

While I am not very familiar with iOS applications since I've never used an iPhone, the aforementioned Fiery Feeds is an option that provides Nextcloud News integration. A couple more options with Nextcloud News integration are: CloudNews and Nextnews. Additionally, I believe (although I could be wrong) there is a news application that comes with the iPhone?

On the Android side there are plenty of options: Nextcloud News Reader, OCReader, Newsout, and Readrops are all notable for their Nextcloud News integration. A couple of other notable apps include Feedly, Flipboard. On the open source side there are quite a few more applications: RSS Reader, Feeder, Capy Reader, and FeedFlow to name a few (available in the F-Droid store).

And there are the applications designed to work with specific cloud platforms like Inoreader, Feedly, and NewsBlur.

(NOTE: while I did mention Flipboard, I am not mentioning apps like GroundNews, SmartNews, Google News, Yahoo! News as those apps are more specifically focused on gathering news from a predefined list of news outlets, and typically don't allow adding your own feeds.)

Conclusion

What I find interesting about this is an image of seeing all the information that is available on the internet as a stream. Much of that information is available for the taking, consuming, researching, etc. However, it's what we do with this information that matters. Feed Readers are like docks. You use a reader to set up the bays for all the information to flow into. How the docks and bays are organized is up to you.

So, what would I do given the whole sea of available options?

I've already mentioned several times that I use Calibre's RSS scanning feature. I like the idea of having e-Books that I can just put on my e-Reader and read at me leisure. But, there is another feature of Calibre I haven't mentioned: the Content Server. This feature starts a web server application that I can use on any of my devices within my house. So, if I wanted to read anything from my library, including all the news sites I download, on my tablet or phone, I can use the content server with my web browser.

But, if I weren't using this solution, I would self-host Tiny Tiny RSS, and use RSS Guard on my desktop, and the open source Tiny Tiny RSS android app on my phone and tablet. The other option I would explore would be setting up Nextcloud, using the Nextcloud News App and using the Android version of the Nextcloud News App.

However, I wouldn't take my advice in this area, as my needs and desires are likely far different from yours. Explore what's out there, see which options give you what you want. Personally, I am happy reading the IndieWeb on my desktop using my web browser, and don't see a need to do anything else with it.

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Categories: #Features Tags: #rss, #feeds, #readers, #windows, #macos, #linux, #android, #ios, #cloud License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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Calm waters on Lake Superior.

I've been collecting a lot of images of water lately. This is the outgrowth of a post I made on Ennui Vagaries about repurposing weather camera photos. There are a lot of weather cameras that are on the shores of lakes, rivers, or at the docks and launches. Collecting these photos has been made exceptionally easy by the Fediverse having many feeds of these images.

While collecting a bunch of the sunset images tonight, I thought of the song Downstream by Supertramp. It's a gorgeous solo piece by Rick Davies with just a simple piano accompaniment. The lyrics are a tribute to his spouse at the time. Basically a simple love song, sung in a very simple manner.

This, in turn, started me thinking about another water themed love song. That would be To Be Over by Yes. Not a lot of people know the story of this song. It was a song that Steve Howe brought to the group. He had written it based on a boat ride he and his wife had taken on a Sunday. Of course, bringing in the start of the song, the rest of the band expanded it into a true Yes ballad. Possibly one of their most underrated works ever.

And then I was thinking, what else kind of matches this mood? Basically slow, gentle water themed songs. And there was one that popped into my mind immediately: Ruby Pool by Vola. The wonder of this song is the piano arpeggios by Martin Werner that lead off the song, followed by the pairing with Adam Janzi's drum pattern is just magical. I could almost listen to a whole song just built off this pairing, but fortunately the lyrics of the song are just a gorgeous as the arrangement, and as always Asger Mygind's vocals are stunning.

So, there you have it. Three, gentle, water-themed songs for a peaceful Sunday.

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Categories: #Music Tags: #songs, #yes, #supertramp, #vola, #pop, #rock, #progressive License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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The Harry Partch Ensemble, via Wikipedia, under a CC 0 License.

Listening to Harry Partch is like going on a surreal archaeological dig through history. Only this is history reinterpreted by someone who has been taking shrooms for two decades. Yet, with the emergence of microtonality in the music of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Angine de Poitrine his works are more relevant today than ever.

Harry Who?

Harry Partch was born on June 24th, 1901 to Virgil Franklin Partch, and his wife Jennie. They were missionaries to China who fled the Boxer Rebellion. His parents settled in Benson, Arizona. He was encouraged by his mother to learn music, and she taught him to read music. He was exposed to music from different cultures including Chinese (via his mother), the Yaqui people, and Spanish songs.

He began studying piano serious in 1913 after his family relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also began composing his earliest piano works (which he later destroyed). In 1919 He relocated with his mother to Los Angeles after the death of his father. In 1920 his mother was killed in a trolley accident. Partch studied music at the University of Southern California's School of Music in 1920, but left two years later being dissatisfied with the teachers.

Rejection of Equal Temperament

Sometime during the 18th Century, western music settled on the tuning system known as twelve-tone equal temperament. After reading Hermann von Helmholtz's [Sensations of Tone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SensationsofTone “Sensations of Tone”) in 1923, Partch began to feel that equal temperament had forced music to become more abstract. This abstraction was stifling the true possibilities for expression in music, so he rejected equal temperament in favor of just intonation.

This marked Partch's first step in finding a different direction for musical expression that remains the inspiration for many avant-garde and experimental musicians to this day.

Partch's Journey

Per Wikipedia's entry on Harry Partch, his career can be divided into several periods: Early Work (1919-1947), Academic Period (1947-1962), and his Late Period (1962-1974). These periods roughly correspond with the types of Partch's compositions, and his exploration of tonality.

During the first period, Partch came to reject the system of equal temperament, favoring just intonation instead. His first experiments involved creating paper coverings that indicated just intonation fingerings for violins. In 1930, he decided to break from the equal temperament tradition completely and burned all his previous 12TET (12 tone equal temperament) based compositions. He then devised a 29 tone scale, and had a viola constructed with which to perform works using this scale (the Adapted Viola).

In 1932, he gave several performances of his works in San Francisco, and won the support of a private group of individuals which allowed him to relocate to New York. The Carnegie Corporation of New York granted him the money he needed to continue his studies in England, where he met Kathleen Schlesinger. Schlesinger had been studying ancient Greek music theory, and had recreated a Kithara from an image on a Greek vase. Upon his return to the United States during the great depression, Partch would spend nine years as a transient / hobo. In 1938 constructed his own Kithara approximately twice the size of Schlesinger's and devised a new 43 tone scale. While in Chicago, Partch would design and build a 43 tone reed organ (aka the Chromelodeon).

The second period saw Partch settling into the University of Wisconsin from 1944-1947, during which he lectured, built more instruments, and finished his book Genesis of a Music. He left in 1947 due to not being able to join the permanent staff of the university, and there being a lack of space for his instruments. In 1949, he was offered the opportunity to convert a smithy into a studio by Gunnar Johansen to continue his work. During his work in the smithy, he recorded Eleven Intrusions and several other works. In 1951, he moved to Oakland, CA for health reasons, and put on a performance of his piece King Oedipus, but was unable to make a recording of it due to objections from the Yeats estate. Partch set up his studio / record label Gate 5 in 1953, and would release records via mail order. During this period Partch also started working with the University of Illinois, and was introduced to Danlee Mitchel, who would later become Partch's heir. Partch produced several performances of his works with the University's support. Partch also began what would a six film collaboration with Madeline Tourtelot. Partch left the University due hostility from the music department, despite having support from other departments and organizations.

Partch's final period saw him returning to California, and setting up studio in Petaluma. He composed And on the Seventh Day, Petals Fell in Petaluma. And, in 1969, Columbia Records released The World of Harry Partch, his first major label release. Partch's final theater was The Delusions of the Fury, produced in 1969. His final work was the soundtrack to the Betty Freeman film The Dreamer That Remains. In 1973 Partch retired. He died of a heart attack on September 3rd, 1974.

Partch's Influence

As is, hopefully apparent, Partch's work was both influential and controversial. During his life he was supported by numerous artists, such as Henry Cowell, Otto Leuning, Roy Harris, and Aaron Copeland. He also had the support of numerous foundations, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the League of Composers, the Fromm Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Towards the end of his life, The Harry Partch Foundation was established to handle his expenses, and administer his work. His instruments. Danlee Mitchel served as the Executive Director of The Harry Partch Foundation until his death. Dean Drummond's group Newband undertook the handling of Partch's instruments and performs with them. The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music holds the Harry Partch Archive 1918-1991.

Partch was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 1974. In 2004 U.S. Highball was selected by the Library of Congress's National Recording Preservation Board.

Closing

While the work of Harry Partch has not seen wide acknowledgment throughout Europe or Eastern Countries, there is growing interest in his work. Partch's work has established a culture where the exploration of alternate tunings for instruments has become something that is more common.

Groups like Angine de Poitrine, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard haven't rejected the concept of equal temperament in their instrument selection. But, they are using the concept of adding more tones to the scale in ways that are substantive, just as Partch developed whole new scales and made large scale compositions with them.

This is the way forward for music. There is an entire world of sound out there waiting to be discovered, or in some cases, rediscovered. Twelve tone equal temperament has been the primary focus of music for centuries. With the advances in synthesizers and sampling over the past several decades, artists have started exploring all sorts of new grounds.

Hopefully, we will see more substantial work done in the field of using just intonation, and other tuning systems.

If you would like to explore the music of Harry Partch, I highly recommend the four volume set: The Harry Partch Collection Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3, and Vol 4, along with other recordings of Partch's work on New World Records.

There is also an excellent film of Harry Partch's Studio from around 1950 available on YouTube. This lets you see all of his instruments and provides a deeper understanding of how they were designed. Partch also plays each of the instruments.

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Categories: #Music Tags: #experimetnal, #microtonal, #american, #influential License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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Image of a checklist with circle with a slash over the top.

I feel fairly certain in saying the author of the post 5 Albums meant no harm. Even the prompt: Introduce yourself with five albums that have shaped you seemed quite innocuous. And I thought: “Cool. I can write a response to this with one hand tied behind my back, and three of my fingers broken”. Part way in, I decided to throw a curveball: I was going to list ten albums. Actually more than ten because my list had multi-volume sets in it. I reject your rules and substitute my own! Take that!

As I worked on my masterpiece, I inserted a couple of snarky little comments between the first and second half that were intended to be humorous about me breaking the rules. Those comments used words like “reductive” and “de minimis”. That's when I realized I was falling into a trap: the clickbait trap. Then I had a further realization: this wasn't just a list, it wasn't just clickbait, it was worse.

So now, after defending writing and blogging metas, I run the risk of being labeled a hypocrite in order to explain why these types of articles are not the silly puff pieces they appear to be. But rather, they are precisely the kind of thing that should be avoided. And, I even have a some potential fixes for what I see as the biggest (but not only) issue.

The Problems

Personally, I see three problems with these kinds of posts:

First: they don't say anything about the author. At least they don't say anything useful, other than being a list of objects. But there is no context to those objects. The author hasn't given the reader any insight into why those objects have meaning. You might think they are objects the author likes or loves, but is that necessarily the case? Aren't you just as “shaped” by the things that you don't like, the things that repulse you, or you are indifferent to?

Second: The author of such a post is opening themselves up to be judged, and conversely putting their audience in the position of being judgmental. What does this accomplish? Nothing useful as far as I can tell. A larger portion of the social issues we have today are based around people being judgmental without having any real knowledge of the people they are judging.

I've read or heard numerous accounts from people that have found their way out of cults or hate groups that are surprised when they realize that whatever they hated was just not worth it. They often don't realize or understand the people or things they hate because they judged them solely on the few things they thought they knew. Things that were regularly misrepresented, or twisted to cause them judge people hatefully.

I'm not saying that judging someone based on a silly list of five albums is on the same level as someone in a cult or hate group. But they do share a small similarity in that they invite judgment based on what is, at best, superficiality, or at worst a potential misunderstanding.

Third: These lists play to some of the trickiest and most difficult aspects of our personalities to navigate. They play to our ego, pride, superiority, or inferiority. This was what happened to me, I realized, when I was writing my snarky comments. I take pride in the fact that I have a wildly varied taste in music, and my ego wouldn't let me just produce a list of five pop/rock albums when there is so much more music out there. That's why I expanded my list (and, in reality, ten entries still weren't enough to encapsulate my listening, and all the recordings that have shaped me.)

The Fixes

So, having talked about the problems, what are the fixes?

First: don't make it a call to action. “Introduce yourself…” is a call for responses. This puts the reader automatically in the role of judging the list and the person that wrote it. If there isn't a call to action, it removes some pressure to judge. There is still some likelihood the reader will judge the list. But it's less likely they will have to navigate their ego or pride while reading it.

Second: The more obvious option: provide context. Tells us a bit more about yourself by telling your reader why these particular items are significant to you. Was it a recording you bought with your first paycheck? Was it playing when you proposed to your spouse? By doing this you invite your readers to relate to you on some level. Their responses can focus more on similarities or differences. This, in turn, may evolve into a sort of blogging based dialog between you and your readers.

Third: Don't write a list. Okay, this sounds like I'm being pedantic. But, really, I have a better idea: take your list and turn it into a series of essays. Write 300–600 words about each of the list entries. Recall stories about them. Explain where they fit into your life. Talk about the things that you like about the item, and even the things that you would change about it if you could.

This is the kind of exercise that can be beneficial in so many ways. You may find new ways of expressing yourself. It can allow you to explore your relationship with the subject. Your readers may see the item in a new light. As with the second entry, responses to your post might be about the similarities or differences between you and your audience. Or, your audience might write about things that hold a similar place in their lives.

Conclusion

When I started writing my response list for the 5 Albums post, I thought it was just a little silly toss off article. But then I quickly threw out the original rules, and having done that, discovered there were bigger issues with this kind of post. The issues are they don't provide any context, and therefore no real insight into the author. The second is that they are a call to judgment. The author is judged, while the audience is being judgmental. Finally, they play to some complicated aspects of our personality (such as ego and pride). Indulging in these complex aspects of our personalities isn't always healthy.

So, I set about suggesting some fixes. The first is to not have a call to action. That will somewhat minimize the judgment aspect. The second is to provide context. Let your audience in on your relationship with these items. Third suggestion would be to write a series of articles instead. Explore more of your writing skills, and let your audience focus more on what's important t to you, instead of the object.

So am I a hypocrite? Maybe partially. But, I am calling this out because I think we can do better. I think understanding when something is a bad idea, and why it is a bad idea can lead to us finding better ways to accomplish the same objective. I have little doubt that the original author of the post intended to make a positive contribution.

We see these kinds of articles all the time. I've even participated in one myself (see: The Shellsharks Music Quiz Challenge). But, I can say at the time I was just trying to get myself writing again. And, this was actually a quiz that was more extensive and open-ended than the “5 Albums” post. Looking back on it, if I were to take it again, a lot of my answers would change.

In the end, this is all just my opinion. Hopefully it has been food for thought, and it may do some good.

Now, if you'll please excuse me, I have a series of articles to start writing… ;)

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Categories: #Writing Tags: #blogging, #lists, #context, #judgment, #clickbait, #meta, #metas License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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Photo of a circular pill sorter box against a pale blue background. Photo by Unattributed. License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Sure, I hear you saying: no one wants to get old. But it's a fact of life, we all eventually get old. And we all eventually have to face our mortality. One of my favorite sayings about this is: One Day We'll All Be Skeletons. A perfect thought that encapsulates the fears of mortality, and it was uttered by a six-year-old, in front of his dad, on video, available for the whole world to see. But the father got mileage from it as everyone that saw the video wanted it on a t-shirt. I've got four of them.

What I am actually referring to, quite literally, is the photograph at the top of this post. The dreaded weekly wheel pill sorter. But ironically, it's not because of the pills in the sorter (that is only a small part of it), but what it represents to me symbolically.

So, first, the pills. These are mostly an annoyance. A matter of compensating for a few small genetic defects that run through my family. I tried, really hard, to avoid taking medication for these defects. Alas, time caught up with me, and I had to start on medication for those defects a couple of years ago. But, given that I've known people that started taking these medications 10–20 years younger than me, I think I did okay to make it this far without them.

Instead, the pill sorter represents is the growing need to rely on medications. Not just the type that compensate for small issues, but the types of medication that keep you alive. The kinds of medications that one should question taking. The question we will all face one day: am I going to be able to live well just by taking this medication? Or, is this medication just prolonging the inevitable? Leaving me to cling to life in a degraded state?

These are complicated questions to answer. And they are doubly complicated to answer if you've had to take care of any loved ones who were dependent on medications. I have, and I honestly questioned if it was worth it.

I am of the opinion that the pharmaceutical industry is too invasive in our lives. They have pushed hard for deregulation, and often bring medications to market for their profitability responsibilities. Look at how many medications come to market only to be pulled within five years because of unknown side effects. My bet is if we hadn't seen this level of deregulation over the last 20–30 years many of those medications wouldn't have been marketed. The harmful side effects would have been found. I'm of the opinion that we need to be extremely cautious when judging the balance between good and harm, especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals.

On the flip side, I have to look at a recently passed family member who was even more anti-pharmaceutical than me. They tried as many suitable homeopathic remedies as they could before seeing a doctor. Don't get me wrong: they weren't stupid about this. They did research, they knew the potential side effects, and risks for any homeopathic course they chose. And yet, they passed about 20 years earlier than I would have guessed. But, it's not clear this was related to their choices in homeopathic treatments as opposed to more established medical treatments.

The pill sorter is serving as a constant reminder of these issues for me. It's reminding me that eventually I will face those same issues, the same choices others I have loved have had to make. For now, though, this pill sorter is just a convenience, allowing me to store my medications in one place, while having a supply of them sitting here at my desk where I take them every morning before starting my work.

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Categories: #Essays Tags: #aging, #medicine, #mortality, #lifequality, #homeopathic, #convenience License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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The view from Lake Michigan from Michigan City East Lighthouse, 2026-07-03.

Fri, July 3rd, 2026: All of these articles were in the Top 12 on Bubbles this morning: You Don't Have to Blog Like Me, Stop Writing for Bubbles, Re: Your Metablogging is Lame, Your Metablogging is Lame as Hell. If you went further there are a lot of similar articles, especially articles talking about blogging platforms. Yeah, so there is a writing obsession running through the Bubbles community. Well alright! Time for me to get on this train to fun and profit!!

Okay, okay, I'm joking. Mostly. Kinda. Definitely.

I agree with the sentiment that writing about writing, and writing about blogging platforms is (potentially) weak content. And that writing targeted simply to get clicks / become popular is lame. Do you know what is even weaker than those styles of content? Yup, you guessed it: complaining about those styles of content.

Metas in the world of writing have existed for just about forever. Longer than any of us have been around. And, guess what? There will continue to be metas in writing long after all of us have joined the ranks of a million monkeys banging on keyboards in another world.

Metas are something that come and go in communities, they are like the waves: sometimes larger and sometimes smaller but if the tides stopped completely we'd be in an even worse situation. Want to achieve low meta-tides? The best solution is to ignore them.

In my experience the thing that matters the most is having your own reason and purpose for writing, and not deviating from it. It's too easy to get distracted by the meta high tides. It can make you want to jump aboard that wave and ride it as far as you can. But in the end you are just left standing on the shore looking for the next big wave to ride.

I'm in the middle of migrating all of my old websites to this platform. Why? The platform I had been using has become a completely unusable mess over the last decade. It is, in my opinion, a top example of the enshittification of platforms. I mentioned it already on this blog as part of a conversation. But, I'm not turning it into content. Why? Covering the enshittification of that platform is a little too on-the-nose for me. Instead, I can stick to my guns and write about the things that I want to write about without the distraction (although, enshittification is well within the range of topics I'm interested in exploring).

The writing in communities like this is at its best when the authors have a sense of why they are writing. They find a core set of values and range of topics and ideas that they want to explore through those values. That makes for more diverse writing: everyone brings something different to the table even when covering the same topic. That makes for more natural and interesting interactions. Much more than everyone riding the next big meta wave.

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Categories: #Opinion Tags: #meta, #metas, #enshittification, #blogging, #communities, #community, #waves, #writing License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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On this day in 1976 America celebrated its Bicentennial birthday. And my family had moved to a house that was less than a year old. We had moved into the house in the late fall of 1975. Today I am living in that house after having left it for over twenty years.

You might notice that I refer to this place as “a house” or “that house”. I don't refer to it as a home. I am not certain that this building is, or ever really was, a home. There is a big differentiation between a house and a home. That likely isn't a revelation for most people. In fact, many understand that home isn't tied to a specific building. Instead, home is where you have a sense to being complete instead of just existing or enduring.

On this day, the 250th birthday of this country, I now know that the Bicentennial was the beginning of the end of my family. And, in an odd way, that end is similar to the state of this country.

My father had a vision for his family. A vision that he felt very strongly about. He wanted to right what he felt were the wrongs of his upbringing. He had a vision for his family. The problem was: the rest of us weren't on the same page. We didn't share his romanticized image of living in the country, of cutting ties with a larger portion of society for the simple life.

And that made everything complex.

My father had this vision of living the simple life. Of raising crops and becoming, at least in part, self-reliant. His vision included my mother, sister, and myself embracing his vision of this lifestyle. The reality is: we didn't, and we never would have embraced it had we known what was in his mind. But, he was from a time when the father was the leader of the house, and the family was subservient to the head of the household.

My mother wasn't the type of person to be isolated. She thrived on human interaction. It was a quality I often found downright irritating. She could meet someone in the grocery store, and instead of having a brief, polite and courteous interaction with them, she would have them telling her their life story. People just seemed to innately trust that she had the knowledge and wisdom to help them solver their lives problems.

My sister was the intellectual. She devoured books at a rate I never could have fathomed. A trip to the bookstore or library tended to result in her carry out stacks of books. A stack of a dozen books would last two weeks, at most. She was not the person that was going to be a “salt of the earth” type of person. She wasn't destined to become a housewife, or given to the back-breaking physical labor of planting and harvesting a large garden. Her ambitions were never going to fit with my fathers vision.

I was the dreamer, the person given to looking at something and saying “what if?”. The sounds emanating from my stereo gave me more solace than any book or garden. I didn't find any value in the social aspects of sports, and didn't appreciate the bounties of the land. And, I didn't have a green thumb to save my life. I was the person that wanted to go off and explore a library or museum on my own. I wanted to see how others had expressed themselves, and find my own form of self-expression.

My father predicted that Donald Trump was going to win the 2017 Presidential Election. When he told me this, I thought he was making a joke, trying to get back at me for predicting the election of Jimmy Carter. (To be fair, I hadn't made that prediction based on any understanding of politics. I just made a prediction based on how I saw other people reacting to Carter. It was as if I was channeling my mother.) What did my father know at that point? After all, in his advancing dementia he had suddenly become fascinated with Dr. Phil.

But now, I wonder if there wasn't something to that prediction? Could my father have understood that the rise of Donald Trump was exposing the deep divisions in this country? Did my father see the parallel between the rise of Donald Trump and the divisions that had been exposed in our family when we moved to this house?

There is no answer to these questions for me. Just as there is no answer to the future of this country. The only thing I know is: just as this building will still be a house tomorrow, there will still be a country called America when there is a different President.

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Categories: #Reflections Tags: #home, #house, #family, #division, #vision, #demise, #history, #future License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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