I spoke with New Scientist about a handful of clauses in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently reaching the finish line of the Parliamentary process.
For some weird combination of factors, I ended up answering questions to three different people for three entirely unrelated projects, and all three interviews went live around the same time. I answered a few questions for the Over/Under series run by Hyle . Love the concept, this was a lot of fun. I also answered a few questions from Kai since he’s running a great series where he asks previous IndieWeb Carnival hosts to share some thoughts about the theme they chose. And lastly, Kristoffer asked me to talk a bit more about my most recent project/newsletter, Dealgorithmed , for his Naive Weekly , another newsletter you definitely want to check out because it’s fantastic. Click those links and check these projects; they’re all wonderful. And especially go check all the other interviews, so many wonderful people are listed on all three sites. Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome. Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
This is a follow-up on my previous post . After talking to a few friends and getting feedback from the kind people who decided to email me and share their thoughts, I decided that I will stop once interview number 150 is out, on July 10th. 150 is a neat number because it means I can match each interview to a first gen Pokemon. I am a 90s kid after all. That said, my stopping on the 10th of July doesn’t mean the series also has to stop. If anyone out there is interested in picking it up and carrying it forward, I’ll be more than happy to give the series away. If that's you, send me an email. I’m also happy to part ways with the domain name if it can be of any help. Whether someone picks up the torch or not, the first 150 interviews will be archived here on my blog for as long as I have a presence on the web. 20 interviews left, 6 drafts are ready to go, a few more people have the questions, and I’m waiting to get their answers (that may or may not arrive before July 10th). It’s going to be fun to see who ends up being the final guest. Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome. Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
Hey all, I hope you're doing well. I'm going to be on medical leave until early April. If you are a sponsor , then you can join the Discord for me to post occasional updates in real time. I'm gonna be in the hospital for at least a week as of the day of this post. I have a bunch of things queued up both at work and on this blog. Please do share them when you see them cross your feeds, I hope that they'll be as useful as my posts normally are. I'm under a fair bit of stress leading up to this medical leave and I'm hoping that my usual style shines through as much as I hope it is. Focusing on writing is hard when the Big Anxiety is hitting as hard as it is. Don't worry about me. I want you to be happy for me. This is very good medical leave. I'm not going to go into specifics for privacy reasons, but know that this is something I've wanted to do for over a decade but haven't gotten the chance due to the timing never working out. I'll see you on the other side. Stay safe out there.
Hair. A nice beard. Savings. Debt. A house. Subscriptions to video streaming services. A piece of forest. Kids. A wife. A husband. Hands without scars. Arms without scars. Legs without scars. A face without scars. A monthly salary. Paid vacations. Happiness. Things I’m proud of. A normal dog. Social media profiles. Investments. Plans for the future. Plans for the present. Plans for the past. A camera. Concrete goals. Wisdom. Ai bots. Ai companions. Ai slaves. Fancy clothes. Colognes. Fame (although I am quite hungry). Faith. Horses in the back. 99 problems. Enlightenment. A daily routine. Willingness to write long posts. Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome. Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
Six children—three girls and three boys—play in a garden by the sea. We follow them as they grow up, go to school, venture away from home, grieve the death of a friend, marry (or not), have children (or not). We do not see or hear their goings on but rather their inner monologues, the thoughts they could never have spoken but feel and know. More prose poem than novel, the writing posits that our inner lives are as rich and detailed as the world around us, perhaps more so. And that there is a continuity threaded through the differences and separations between us, a simultaneous distinctness and blurring of selves, both wave and particle, each headed for the shore. View this post on the web , subscribe to the newsletter , or reply via email .
Was nice to hang in colorado! Thank you for using RSS. I appreciate you. Email me
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with David Cain, whose blog can be found at raptitude.com . Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter . The People and Blogs series is supported by Markus Heurung and the other 116 members of my "One a Month" club. If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month. I’m a Canadian blogger and entrepreneur. I started doing this back when I was in a totally different line of work. I was a surveyor for an engineering company, and where I live the industry slows down in the winter because of the harsh cold, so I began poking around on the internet a little more than usual. That led to discovering blogs, and the possibility of doing that for a living. I had always been into writing, so having a way to publish my thoughts and for interested parties to read them and care was a revelation. That was 2008 or so, when the internet was a very different place. Social media was a niche and nerdy thing, big companies had no idea how to use the internet, and we were not all algorithmized. I miss that time. Aside from what I write about (see below), I’m into indoor climbing, reading, religion, history, and lifting weights. I’m also into the idea of the “Oldschool Internet.” As you know if you’re over 30, the internet used to feel different than it does now. It was freer, more creative and weird, and less dominated by big platforms and algorithms. I have a deep, deep nostalgia for it and I wish I could recreate that feeling. When I was goofing around on the internet at work I found a blog about blogging for a living, and one day decided I would do that. I had always been interested in the inner world of the human being. I was always thinking about this conundrum of having mind and a body. You have no instruction manual, and you have to go and live a life and try to be happy. I sat down and listed like a hundred obscure ideas I’d been wanting to tell the world. What I didn’t realize is that my obsession with the inner human world and managing the human condition was due to having undiagnosed ADHD, which made ordinary life stuff very complicated and difficult. My challenges led me to reading piles of self-help and spiritual-flavored stuff. A lot of it was crap but I did learn quite a bit about making the most of the mess that is human life, and shared what I found. The blog I started was called Raptitude . It was just a made-up word, combining “rapt” and “aptitude.” The idea is that you can get better at appreciating life, at being rapt by the day-to-day experience of being alive. Many of my posts were little tricks I’d figured out for getting yourself to do things, not realizing it was coming from a rather crippling psychiatric condition. I finally got diagnosed at age 40, after twelve years of blogging. I always tried to stay away from writing in the kind of mushy, therapeutic tone that dominates the self-help and spiritual space. I wrote about weird and hypothetical things instead, and I found an audience pretty quickly. This year I launched a second site to help other “productivity-challenged” people. It’s called How to Do Things , and it’s more practical and less philosophical than Raptitude, and is aimed at adults with ADHD. Today my writing is more focused, less wild. But Raptitude is the same blog it was 17 years ago when I first launched it. I have ideas all the time and take voice notes when I’m out and about. If I’m home I just mind-dump into a text document. Later I go through my ideas and find one I think I could actually write about. I play around with it, find an angle, and start typing. I do a lot of moving things around, cutting and pasting. Sometimes I’ll write 3 or 4 thousand words and end up with a 1200-word post. Sometimes I even delete the original idea and just riff on a tangential idea. It is not an efficient or structured process, it’s just habit. I take forever to write posts, even now. I don’t do drafts exactly, I just barf out the idea, try to find a bottom-line point, then revise what I’ve written to point to that bottom-line idea. I do a couple of passes to try to shorten it, which just as often ends up lengthening it. Then I add pictures with funny captions so people don’t get bored and publish it. I don’t involve anyone else in the writing and there are typos sometimes. I have a home office and that’s pretty much exclusively where I work. Everything I need is there, my desk has a lot of space, I have multiple monitors. I play instrumental music. Classical or ambient electronic. I’ve worked in coffee shops, and I do get inspired by being out in the world. But I always feel guilty about taking up their seats for too long, and the travel time seems like a waste so I don’t do that much. I have always used WordPress, and self-host on BigScoots. I love the host and am so glad I switched from a large, well-known terrible company I will not name. WordPress is good and a lot less clunky than it used to be. Today I would just do a Substack. I still might switch to Substack one day. It seems like a well-contained environment that takes eliminates a lot of technical and design considerations that can suck up writing time. You’re also built into a network of other writers and readers. What I would do differently is learn to make a kind of content that doesn’t take long to make. I take forever to do one piece and it is still hard. Another thing I’d do differently is define my topic more narrowly. I write about anything pertaining to human life, which makes it difficult to know what to write about, and difficult to do any marketing or intentional growth, because there is no identifiable crowd or demographic that I know would be into my “topic.” It costs a fortune, all told, because it’s a business and not just a blog. Hosting isn’t bad – a few hundred dollars a year. I pay someone on a monthly basis to update and maintain the site and deal with downtime and crashes and other stuff that used to blow up my life once a year or so. I’m not a super savvy technical person so this is necessary. The highest cost is the email management system, which is essential for the layers and layers of emails I send. With 40,000 people in the system it costs over $400 a month. There may be cheaper options but switching would be too big a pain. I also have tons of little subscription costs that have become necessary for product delivery (Dropbox for example). Altogether my monthly business expenses are more than my rent. I make a full-time living from my blog by offering products to my readers. I also have a Patreon. The whole operation would be way cheaper to run if I didn’t sell anything. I am all for monetizing personal blogs. Good content is hard to make and takes time, and if you want to offer something bigger than blog posts, you have to charge for it or it doesn’t get made. I am a fan of David Pinsof’s Everything is Bullshit and Scott Alexander’s Astral Codex Ten , both of which are Substacks now. Mostly I read books these days. I just want to say this was a lot of fun. Not to be the old man in the room but the internet has changed immensely since I started in 2008. Part of what has dropped away (at least for me) has been being in the “world” of blogs. Answering these questions and reading other people’s answers on your site has reminded me that some semblance of that community spirit still exists. Thanks for keeping it alive. Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed . If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 128 interviews . Make sure to also say thank you to Brennan Kenneth Brown and the other 116 supporters for making this series possible.
I’ve been writing a lot more over the past year - in fact, I’ve written at least once a week , and this is article number 60 within the past year. I did this for many reasons: to get better at writing, to get out of a creative rut, play around with different writing voices, but also because I wanted to move my blog from a dry tech blog to something I myself am a little more excited about. I started this blog in 2012, documenting my experiences with various programming tools and coding languages. I felt like I contributed by sharing tutorials, and having some public technical artifacts helped during job searches. Over the years I branched out - short reviews for books I’ve read, recounts of my travel (and turning my Prius into a car camper to do so), notes on personal finance… All of this shares a theme: descriptive writing. I feel most confident describing and recounting events and putting together tutorials. It’s easy to verify if I’m wrong - an event either happened or didn’t, the tool either worked - or didn’t. And I was there the whole time. That kind of writing doesn’t take much soul and grit, and while it’s pretty good at drawing traffic to the site (eh, which is something I don’t particularly care about anymore ), I wouldn’t call it particularly fulfilling. Creatively, at least. I’m scared to share opinions, because opinions vary and don’t have ground truth. It’s easier to be completely wrong, or to look like a fool. I don’t want to be criticised for my writing. Privacy is a matter too - despite writing publicly, I consider myself to be a private person. So, after 13 years of descriptive writing, I made an effort to experiment in 2025. I wrote down some notes on parenthood, my thoughts on AI and Warhammer , nostalgia, identity, ego… I wrote about writing, too. It’s been a scary transition, and it still is. I have to fight myself to avoid putting together yet another tutorial or an observation on modal interfaces . I’ve been somewhat successful though, as I even wrote a piece on my anxiety about sharing opinions . But descriptive writing continues sneaking in, trying to reclaim the field. You see, I write under my own name. I like the authenticity this affords me, and it’s nice not having to make a secret blog (which I will eventually accidentally leak, knowing my forgetfulness). I mean this blog has been running for 14 years now, that’s gotta count for something. But writing under my own name also presents a major problem. It’s my real name. If you search for “Ruslan Osipov”, my site’s at the top. I don’t hide who I am, and you can quickly confirm my identity by going to my about page . This means that friends, colleagues, neighbors, bosses, government officials - anyone - can easily find my writing. If there are people out there who don’t like me - for whatever reason - they can read my stuff too. The more I write, the more I learn that good writing is 1) passionate and 2) vulnerable (it’s also well structured, but I have no intention of restructuring this essay - so you’ll just have to sit with my fragmented train of thought). It’s easy to write about things I’m passionate about. I get passionate about everything I get involved in - from parenting and housework to my work. I write this article in Vim, and I’m passionate enough about that to write a book on the subject . Vulnerability is hard. Good writing is raw, it makes the author feel things, and leaves little bits and pieces of the author scattered on the page. You just can’t fake authenticity. But here’s the thing - real life is messy. Babies throw tantrums, work gets stressful, the world changes in the ways you might not like. That isn’t something you want the whole world to know. Especially if that world involves a prospective employer, for example. So you have to put up a facade, and filter topics that could pose risk. I’m no fool: I’m not going to criticize the company that pays me money. I like getting paid money, it buys food, diapers, and video games. I still think it’s a bit weird and restrictive that a future recruiter is curating my writing today. The furthest I’m willing to push the envelope here is my essay on corporate jobs and self-worth . Curation happens to more than the work-related topics of course. And that might even be a good thing. I don’t just reminisce about my upbringing. It’s a brief jumping off point into my obsession with productivity . Curation is just good taste. You’re not getting my darkest, messiest, snottiest remarks. You’re getting a loosely organized, tangentially related set of ideas. Finding that gradient has been exciting. So, here’s what I won’t write about. I won’t share too many details about our home life. I won’t complain about a bad day at work. I won’t badmouth people. But I will write about what those things feel like - the tiredness, the frustration, the ego.
It’s already been over 2 years since you have left us. You still leave an incredible hole in our home and our hearts. Only toward the end of last year, I finally got rid of your old medication and your food. I haven’t taken down the sign at my door with your face on it. Every year, we use the reusable photo calendar with pictures of you on it. We have Christmas tree decorations with your face, too. The time shortly after was rough. Then it got a little easier, slowly. It all felt like one big vacation you were on. You weren’t gone, just somewhere else, living your own life, traveling. But recently, it feels like it’s been too long, like someone you love who’s taking longer than usual to return home. It feels like slowly losing touch because everything is changing, we are changing, and you can no longer witness it. We can’t see you change, either. We are no longer growing together, and it’s becoming more apparent with time. You’ll always stay stuck the way you were, and we increasingly become different people than we were with you. It’s so scary to feel like it all happened in a parallel universe. Each walk we go on, we miss you and want you with us. It’s surreal to know we used to walk the same paths in the forest together. I’m scared that with time, I will forget the way you felt, the way you smelled, and all your little quirks and silly behaviors. We have videos and we still have your fur, but it feels like it’s not enough. Vigdís wrote a poem for you yesterday: Grief is not a Liquid Though it flows Grief is not a Plant Though it grows Grief is not a Thorn Though it stings Grief is not a Bird Though it sings Grief is not a String Though it tears Grief is not a Fire Though it sears Grief is not a Robber Though it takes Grief is not a Mourner Though it wakes Grief is not a Stone Though it weighs Grief is not a Friend But it stays At least I can write about you so everyone knows you existed and you mattered. Reply via email Published 11 Feb, 2026
Apparently this is a thing now , so I'm gonna join in. 🙃 Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is great, and you're great for using it. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment . Rude people. Late people. People who don't like dogs. What's that all about?? The sight of blood. I'll faint. Immediately. Like Manu, blogs that don't have a simple way to contact the author. The hold that mobile phones have on our society. Over-population. Large cities.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been sitting with a growing feeling that my life has (once again! unfortunately, this is not the first time) become… busy in a very specific way. Not busy with people or experiences or even work, but busy with tools. With systems. With capturing, tracking, logging, and organising. At some point, and this keeps happening, I start living inside my artifacts. It doesn’t happen all at once. It creeps in quietly - every new app, every new method, every new process… disguised as something fun and even mildly productive. I capture thoughts in Day One. I open monthly notes in Bear. Then weekly notes. Weekly notes become blog posts (which I actually kind of like and will probably keep) . Then I add a monthly recap. Then trackers - books, movies, mood, walking, yoga, food. The purpose is, I tell myself, to consolidate. Reflect. Optimise. Learn something profound about myself, I guess. But most of it was probably because I can , because it gives me a sense of control, like tidying up and minimising my house when my work and life get too busy and too frantic. The moment of clarity came last week. I’d just finished my January monthly recap that I added to my monthly Bear notes , a system I am trialling. I’d written it carefully, linked all my blog posts to it, and spent a good 45 minutes on it. And then Bear didn’t sync due to some Bear Web glitch. The whole thing disappeared. My first reaction was annoyance as I was getting ready to write it all again. And then clarity. I realised I didn’t actually want to do it again. Or even recover it. In fact, I didn’t want to be doing it at all. I deleted the monthly recaps. I kept a very simple monthly note, but that may go as well if it doesn’t prove to be useful. I’m stopping movie tracking entirely. I’ll keep book tracking , but only because that’s where I consolidate notes and highlights, and I like having it in one place. I still journal in Day One, and my blog will remain my creative outlet - writing when I want to write, not because I put any pressure on myself to write. And I’m done trying to tie it all together into some grand, optimised life dashboard. What I really want is to come home and do nothing. Or go for a walk. Or do something small with the kids. Yesterday I went for a walk at lunchtime without my headphones and realised how rare it’s become to just be out of my head. Not recording my thoughts into an app (it’s such a cool app, though; I will share more about it soon). But that’s the part that’s been bothering me the most - how much time I’ve spent thinking about and analyzing my life instead of living it. I even caught myself halfway through justifying a new laptop purchase, as if the answer to anything was more tech. I don’t need a new MacBook. I don’t need better tools. I need fewer of them. So here are some notes to self. living over documenting. to focus on work while I’m at work. to focus on my kids and my life when I’m not. presence over optimisation. tools that support me while I live my life. to finish things, let things go, and stop carrying half-alive projects in my head. living over documenting. to focus on work while I’m at work. to focus on my kids and my life when I’m not. presence over optimisation. tools that support me while I live my life. to finish things, let things go, and stop carrying half-alive projects in my head.
I am quite content to be alone except on a mild evening at twilight. During the quick hours of the day I am busy. Busy with things I enjoy doing, for the most part. Or busy with people I enjoy being around. I count myself among the luckiest alive. During the night I am dreaming. Night is dreaming time whether I am asleep or awake. The dreams are all mine. I stretch out in the bed and in my mind. I never had such space before. Even in my childhood, my dreams were so small, so bordered. Always tied to some other person, some predetermined identity, some set of standards to uphold. Now my dreams and I can wander at will. For this spaciousness, this freedom, I gladly pay the price of whatever loneliness may peek over the headboard or rattle in the closet. I don’t mean fantasies, here. Though the physical need for another person, another body, is real and present. That’s just a fact of being human, for most of us. Not loneliness so much as lust. I handle both with the means at hand, and am largely content. But twilight comes. On a cold winter day, twilight enhances the coziness of my space, my routine, the comforts of my home and children and friends and hobbies. I can make a pot of stew and dance in the kitchen and get lost in a book and there are no emotions to navigate but my own. This is a peace I do not take lightly. But twilight comes. Twilight comes on a day when the windows are open and the light is mellow. The sunset streaks of gray and orange and blue linger behind a row of trees. I want to turn to someone and say, Look. The music filters through an open door as a bird sings. I want to turn to someone and say, Listen. I want to let this awe and gratitude bubble out and be seen for a moment by another person before it lifts up and away and disappears, as all things do. I want to be a point of reflection for someone else’s awe and wonder. Or pain. We all contain multitudes. Contentment is a spectrum. As is loneliness. I have been together and I have been alone. Loneliness is part of both experiences but it has different flavors. I have been together and I have been alone. Contentment is part of both experiences but it too has different flavors. We have to decide, each moment, what problem we are solving. Sometimes we get so busy solving the problem of loneliness, or lust, or ambition, or insecurity, or sadness, or fear, that we don’t see the larger context. Our larger context, our story, in which this one emotion, this one want , is but a single piece. A significant one, perhaps. But not the wholeness of our being. I want to fold things in, not push them away.
In Mina Le's latest video, she quotes Adam Aleksic about quitting or severely reducing social media and phone use: " For one, it's the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand and pretending like the algorithm doesn't exist. Whether you like it or not, our culture is still being shaped by these platforms, and they won't go away by themselves. All of our music and fashion aesthetics are either defined by or against the algorithm, which means that even the "countercultural" tastes of the No Phone People are necessarily influenced by it. Engaging with algorithmic media - in a limited, deliberate manner - is thus important to understanding your experience in society as a whole. Not engaging, meanwhile, makes you vulnerable to being blindsided by sudden social or political shifts. Each Reddit argument and YouTube comment war is an epistemic basis for understanding the current state of cultural discourse. If you ignore those, you lose touch with reality as most people experience it. " I can see why he'd think that, and maybe to a small part I can understand. We feel out of control about our screen behavior at times, and we expect drastic changes from drastic measures, when a bit more nuance could be more helpful. But in my view, the importance of social media in staying culturally in touch is completely overstated. People still go outside! People go to work, to university, to school, to their clubs and other responsibilities or hobby spaces. They talk to their friends, family, superiors and acquaintances and they see what people vote for locally. They see the banners, flags, posters and stickers in their area. They witness what the strangers on the sidewalk, in cafes, restaurants, public transport and other spaces talk about. The quote, on the other hand, acts as if people's only connection to others or the outside world in general is through their phone, which is nuts. No one is blinded by a cultural shift for not having social media unless they also do not interact with anyone outside of their home. Not everyone in your real life is part of "your bubble". Plenty of us have family members, peers or coworkers with wildly different views that we still interact with. Yes, these are mass platforms where tons of content gets created, and music snippets, memes and viral moments have shaped our time and memories of specific years, don't get me wrong - but this ignores that a lot of the accounts are simply lurkers who do not contribute at all. Many have a very weak output that has no impact at all (or no lasting one), or they create on a private, locked down profile for people they approved. For every area, country, and even globally, there are a few hundred creators who truly shape culture, but they do so in a way that either transcends the online, or stays only making a local impact no one else outside is missing out on. The view also doesn't take into account how sturdy algorithmic bubbles now seem to be. What some see as a huge trend online is actually something small in the grand scheme of things, and it's something their friend hasn't even seen, despite otherwise living in the same area and having tastes. You can be on social media and still "miss out" on whatever Adam means; you can also be off of social media and your friends will send you (or screen record for you) funny posts and short-form videos from Tumblr, Tiktok, X and more anyway. News outlets and publications like 404media pick up internet drama and memes as well, and commentary/video essay YouTubers like Hannah Alonzo, Kiki Chanel, Brooke Sharks, Becauseimmissy and more show and break down viral videos and creators and give more insight what's going on socially and culturally in 40-90 minute long videos. This is far more valuable to me (and the attention span, I guess!) than just seeing the original video on a feed. It contextualizes a lot of videos under a shared topic, identifies a pattern, and tends to be published a few weeks later, only giving time to things that truly lasted a while or were blowing up. It's an amazing filter, and you do not need to have any accounts or spend hours of time on a feed that makes you sad and harvests your data if you don't want to. You don't even need a phone to consume all that - you can do it on a cheap laptop, if you want to. I disagree with the notion that it is culturally important to be very aware of what goes on in comment sections. They are notoriously filled with inflammatory trash because it is easier to fire off a comment than to write an email or write a long-form blog post about it. People comment on things without opening the link or fully reading the post, and just read the title, rushing to be the first ones to comment and get more engagement. Comment sections also suffer from the usual review bias, where people usually only feel the need to comment if they feel strongly about something (usually negatively). That means the impression you'll get from these will be very skewed towards the loud, often abrasive minority and their upvoters. As things that make you feel strongly get more engagement, feeds get distorted and comments asking for the most extreme consequences or showing the most extreme view get catapulted to the top visually. While the websites and many of the commenters skew towards focusing on US culture and issues, it also skews towards the American lens on things. If you really want to be in touch with culture (especially if you do not live in the US), you cannot base your cultural understanding on these! In a way, this quote reads to me like an addict justifying why they should stay; like a smoker who says they need the breaks to rest and socialize, or the alcoholic who says they need the bar to socialize and the drinks to loosen up, as "social lubricant". Lots of culture and tradition in my country involves alcohol, yet I don't drink, and the disadvantages of that have yet to show. It's important to note that social media is Adam Aleksic's job . He gets his success from his short-form content on TikTok. It will never be in the interest of people in that industry for others to log off or stop consuming. His job necessitates that he posts frequently, stays up to date, consumes the feed and jumps on any trend he can, even if it's just the latest slang word explained through an etymologist's lens. Content creators also have to, at times, overstate their importance and impact to justify it all - the sums of money, the dark patterns, money off of unethical platforms, or spending so much time in front of a screen, some even essentially living a lie for content. It's all supposed to be worth something, to be for the common good, be done for the people, and immortalize... something , I guess. In my view, not everyone needs to experience everything firsthand or be directly knowledgeable about everything. It's better that way, even. You can always rely on articles, long-form video essays accessible without accounts, and podcasts from different sources, or simple conversations with others to keep you updated on stuff that's not on your radar. If it's important enough it will make your way to you, filtered and curated in a way that makes sense to you and focuses on what is truly important to you. If you want to know more, you are free to research and dive deeper. But it will always be impossible for you to be aware of everything. I do not need to know about the latest looksmaxxing trend that will vanish in a month, but I do care about how influencers consistently normalize overconsumption and how it is done. Others seeing it for me and sparking a conversation about it is how I was still able to write this without having an account on any of the big platforms. I know it can be scary to suddenly feel like you do not understand internet culture or memes anymore, but being less in touch about youth culture is a normal part of getting older, and the speed at which we go through trends and viral content has increased massively. Most things you do not understand right now that make you question whether it was the right choice to leave some socials behind is something you will never hear about again. You'll see what stands the test of time and what doesn't. The full piece is here , if you are interested in the quote's context. Reply via email Published 09 Feb, 2026
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not. 1️⃣ Jose Munoz has a good tip for not getting sucked into doom-scrolling apps by Siri Suggestions in Search and the App Library: simply hide them from those areas. [ 🔗 josemunozmatos.com ] 2️⃣ I love a good stats-based pitch. Herman provides one for the benefits of morning exercise. [ 🔗 herman.bearblog.dev ] 3️⃣ Jason Fried explains a clever design detail about the power reserve indicator on a mechanical watch. [ 🔗 world.hey.com ] 4️⃣ I found myself nodding along to Chris Coyier’s list of words you should probably avoid using in your writing. [ 🔗 css-tricks.com ] 5️⃣ I spent a surprising amount of time recently perusing the depths of Louie Mantia’s portfolio and blog after reading his People & Blogs interview . He’s worked on so many cool things, lots of which have touched my life. [ 🔗 lmnt.me ] 6️⃣ Robert Birming made me feel a little better about my less-than-tidy house. [ 🔗 robertbirming.com ] 7️⃣ I’m not going to buy it, but I’m certainly intrigued by this tiny eReader that attaches via MagSafe onto the back of your phone. I love my Kobo, but it so often gets left behind. This would be a remedy. [ 🔗 theverge.com ] Thanks for reading 7 Things . If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know . And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web. HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts , shortcuts , wallpapers , scripts , or anything — please consider leaving a tip , checking out my store , or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated! I’m always happy to hear from you on social , or by good ol' email .
I was chatting with Kevin earlier today, and since he’s unhappy with his mindless phone usage , I proposed a challenge to him: for the next 4 weeks, each Sunday, we’re gonna publish screenshots of our screen time usage as well as some reflections and notes on how the week went. If you also want to cut down on some of your phone usage, feel free to join in; I’ll be happy to include links to your posts. I experimented with phone usage in the past and I know that I can push screen time usage very low , but it’s always nice to do these types of challenges, especially when done to help someone else. Like Kevin, I’m also trying to read more. I read 35 books last year , the goal for 2026 is to read 36 (currently more than halfway through book number 5), and so I’m gonna attempt to spend more time reading on paper and less on screen. It’s gonna be fun, curious to see how low I can push my daily averages this time around. Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome. Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Frances, whose blog can be found at francescrossley.com . Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter . The People and Blogs series is supported by Minsuk Kang and the other 122 members of my "One a Month" club. If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month. Hello! I’m Frances, I live in the East Midlands in the UK with my wife, back in my hometown to be near my family. I like stories, spending lots of time outside, history, and being an aunt. Right now I’m into zines, playing more ttrpgs, reading lots of biographies, and am going to take some letterpress printing classes. This year I am looking forward to camping, more reading projects, outdoor swimming, and feeding all the neighbourhood slugs with my garden veg. Just generally I’m interested in creativity, learning, fun projects, and trying new things, then blogging about it. I work in the voluntary sector and adult education, and am training to be a mental health counsellor. In February 2025 I got into an enthusiasm about the indie web. I’ve been messing around on the internet since 2000 when I started making geocities sites. There have been many different blogs and sites since then but nothing for the past few years. I really wanted to get among it and I went from looking at some Neocities sites to having my blog up and running within hours. Since then I've had fun adding more stuff to my site, and tweaking things, but no major changes. It took a while to settle into a rhythm - which is upbeat, chatty, 250-ish words, three to five times a week. Now I'm really happy with how it's going and it feels like I’ve only just gotten started. I love emailing with people, taking part in blog carnivals, and so on. Mostly ideas come from or are about books I'm reading, little projects I'm doing, tv and films, other people's posts, conversations with my niblings, rabbit holes I'm going down, and stuff I enjoy. Writing helps me think, possibly writing is how I think. I try to stay positive and to write posts that are hopefully fun for other people to read. It’s very off-the-cuff when ideas come up and I put them in a draft, even just a sentence of an idea. There's always a few posts on the go at any one time and they usually get posted within a week. I like a choice of things to be working on - which is true of most stuff, not just blog posts. Some posts like my link roundups or lists of things I've been enjoying are added to over time, then posted when they get to a good length. I've been experimenting with ‘theme’ weeks or series, which has been great fun so far. I do think the physical space influences creativity. To keep my battery charged I need to be exposed to new ideas: reading, going to a museum, looking at art, doing things. I’ve spent years training myself out of the idea I have to be in the ideal creative environment or state in order to write. I'll write queueing at the shops or on the bus, perfectly happily. It’s more about being able to write whenever I have time or ideas. Ideally, I’d be in a field. I am almost always listening to music though. There is deliberately very little in the way of a tech stack. I use Bear Blog, which I love very much. My domains are with Namecheap. That’s it. I didn’t want anything to complicate getting started when I was in that enthusiasm. I’m mostly on my phone or tablet so it was essential I could write, post, and fiddle, really do everything, without needing my laptop. I don’t even draft elsewhere - I write directly into the Bear Blog editor because I believe in living dangerously. No backups, we die like men. Honestly, no. I made decisions - the platform, to use my name - and I could have made them differently but I stand by them. Those are just details - writing, thinking, sharing, contributing, and connecting with people are the real focus. I’ve got an annual paid plan for Bear Blog which is about £40 a year plus my domain name is about £12 a year. It does not generate revenue and I don’t want or need it to. People can do whatever they like with their personal blogs and I will contribute to a tip jar, buy people’s books or zines, and so on, whenever I can. This is the toughest question! So many great blogs. Just a few, and I’d love to see any of them interviewed: mɛ̈rmɛ̈r , Sylvia at A parenthetical departure , Ruth at An Archaeopteryx , Ním's memex , Paul Graham Raven at Velcro City Tourist Board , Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad at The White Pube , and Paul Watson at The Lazarus Corporation . I’m just a big fan of everyone out here rewilding the web with fun blogs, sites, and projects. Including everything you do, Manu, with your blog, People and Blogs, and Dealgorithmed. Thank you for them, and for having me here. Another cool project: Elmcat made an interactive map of the TTRPG blogosphere . Not only is this an amazing technically but it's so inspiring to see the community and all the connections. Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed . If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 127 interviews . Make sure to also say thank you to Sixian Lim and the other 122 supporters for making this series possible.
Over two years of consistent writing and publishing, I’ve internalized a few lessons for producing satisfying—if not necessarily “good”—work: I covered similar ground previously in Writing without a plan . This post builds on the same idea. If I want to see the shape of the idea I’m trying to communicate in my writing, I must get it down on paper as quickly as possible. This is similar to how painters lay down underdrawings on canvas before applying paint. I can’t judge the quality of my idea unless I finish this underdrawing. Without this basic sketch to guide me, I might end up writing the wrong thing altogether. More than once, I’ve slaved away at a long blog post for days, only to realize that my core thesis was bunk. Writing quickly allows me to see the idea in its entirety before I waste time and energy refining it. How do I define quickly ? For blog posts like this one, I try to produce a first draft in about 45 minutes. For longer pieces, I take about the same time but work in broad strokes and make heavy use of placeholders. It’s easy to edit the life and vitality out of a piece by over-editing it. I’ve done it many times. I’m prone to spending hours upon hours polishing the same few paragraphs in a work, complicating my sentences by attaching a hundred sub-clauses, burying important ideas under mountains of caveats, turning direct writing into purple prose, and inflating my word counts to planetary proportions. Light edits to a first draft improve my writing. If I keep going, I reach a point of diminishing returns where every new edit feels like busywork. And then, if I keep going some more, I start making the writing worse rather than better. Spending too much time editing puts me in a mental state that’s similar to semantic satiation , but at the scale of a full essay or story. The words in front of my eyes begin to lose their meaning, ideas become muddled, and I can no longer tell if anything I’ve written makes sense at all. At that point, I have no choice but to walk away from the work and come back to it another day. It’s no fun. I try to spend a little more time editing than I do writing, but only a little. I’ve learned to recognize that if editing a draft takes me significantly longer than it took me to write it, there’s probably something wrong with the piece. If editing takes too long, it’s better to throw it away and redo from start . If it’s taking too long to edit, rewrite. By writing quickly, I’ve convinced my brain that rewriting something wholesale is cheap and easy. It’s profitable and practical for me to write out a single idea multiple times, exploring it from different angles, finding new insight and depth every time I take a fresh stab at it. If writing a first draft takes 45 minutes, making multiple attempts at the same idea is no big deal. If it takes four hours, I’m more likely to go with my first attempt. Spending too much time on first drafts is a good way for me to get married to bad ideas. I wrote this very blog post three times because I couldn’t quite capture what I wanted to say in the first two drafts. The content of the post changed entirely with every new attempt, but the core ideas remained the same. No piece of writing is ever perfect. If I keep looking, I can find flaws in every single piece of writing I’ve ever published. I find it a waste of time to keep refining my work once it reaches the good enough stage. If I’ve communicated my ideas clearly and haven’t misrepresented any facts, I can allow a few clumsy sentences or a bad opening paragraph to slide. Even as I publish imperfect work, I try to look back at my past writing, notice the mistakes I keep repeating, and try to do better next time. I find that publishing a lot of bad work and learning from each mistake is a better way to learn and grow compared to writing a small number of “perfect” pieces. By working quickly, I’ve been able to produce a lot of bad-to-mediocre writing, but I feel satisfied. As I keep saying, finding joy in the work I do is more important to me than producing something extraordinary. I’d rather write a hundred bad essays with gleeful abandon than slave over a single perfect manuscript. There’s joy in finishing something, closing the book on it, calling it a day, and moving on. There’s joy in trying out different styles, voices, subjects, ideas, personalities. There’s joy in knowing that there will always be a next thing to write, and the next, and the next. When I’m stuck writing something that’s not fun to work on, I find a certain consolation in knowing that I’ll be done soon. That my sloppy writing process means I’m allowed to finish my piece quickly, put it out into the world, and move on to something more enjoyable. Now you’ve reached the end of this post, and I don’t quite know how to leave you with a solid kicker. Instead of doing a good job, I’ll end with this Ray Bradbury quote that I copied off somebody’s blog: Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t “try” to do things. You simply “must” do things. Perfect. I’ve never liked thinking anyway. Write quickly Edit lightly Prefer rewriting to editing Publish with flaws
In January, I wrote about doing a month without caffeine and gave an update one week in. In the original post, I wrote about realizing I was using it to override exhaustion rather than addressing it. I had been relying on matcha, black tea, come coffee and caffeinated water flavours to get through poor sleep, university pressure, workouts, and social commitments, which ultimately led to burnout. So I decided to quit for a month, and also not allow any decaf products, since they also contain a lesser amount. I experienced withdrawal headaches, nausea and changes to my hunger, but also my energy became steadier, my mood calmer, and my concentration more sustainable without the sharp spikes and crashes. I concluded with some lessons for when I resume, namely reserving caffeinated drinks for when it really matters, not consuming them after noon, reducing the caffeine intake (less strong matcha or black tea, less coffee shots etc.) and not using it to suppress hunger or other needs. Now that the month has passed, I'm back to report that it continued like the first post ended; I feel very calm, emotions and situations are more manageable, focus and task-switching is less of an issue. Getting up and going to bed feel easier. What took the longest to normalize were the gastrointestinal effects; it became clear my body relied on the caffeine to do that business at the usual times, and at first, everything was very delayed and I dealt with constipation. But during the third week, it went back to normal. I've had quite a few moments towards the end where I almost gave in, but I persisted. Sometimes I just really crave a specific taste or mouthfeel, and nothing can really replace matcha for me. It's such a comfort and reward. I'm also very, very used to having specific kind of beverages to study or work on something, so breaking that was difficult. I think this reset was great. I found out I can just go without caffeine as well without a meaningful drop in productivity, and I genuinely feel happier, more rested and stable. Now I know it's still entirely optional and I can enjoy it for the taste or specific rituals to get ready :) I like to think I have reset my palate with this too, which will come in handy for upcoming matcha reviews ! Now I will enjoy a mocha chocolate bar I saved for this! Reply via email Published 04 Feb, 2026
This blog is anonymous. I wrote a bit about that in my blogging journey , how I made the mistake of announcing my first blog to all my friends and family then got self-conscious, and how that really stifled what I wanted to write about. I wrote about it in more detail in another post, but the simple version is this: this space is mine, a Room of My Own . Blogging felt like it belonged to a privileged few (a leftover belief from the early 2000s — I binged on those blogs like no other), and it wasn’t until Facebook that writing in public under my own name felt accessible. I also believed continuation had to be earned - that validation or “success” would give me permission to keep going. That whole thing around visibility and validation is captured so well in this quote from Baby Reindeer …because… because fame encompasses judgment, right? And I… I feared judgment my entire life. That’s why I wanted fame, because when you’re famous, people see you as that, famous. They’re not thinking all the other things that I’m scared they’re thinking. Like, “That guy’s a loser or a drip or a fucking fa*ggot.” They think, “It’s the guy from that thing.” “It’s the funny guy.” And I wanted so badly to be the funny guy. “Why keep your blog anonymous, why not just journal then?” someone asked me after we emailed about one of my blog posts. And although I do journal privately, writing publicly (even anonymously) does something different. When I know someone might read what I’m saying, I have to distil the idea. It forces clarity. I stop rambling and try to focus. And the bonus is that sometimes what I write resonates with someone else, and we exchange ideas. Over the last few years, and through my blogging struggle (I hate that it was a struggle: start, stop, change domains, shut down, start again), I’ve also realised that what I want to write about here isn’t something I know many people in real life are interested in. And even when I do try to have those conversations, I don’t really get anywhere in depth. It almost feels like there’s no real interest in topics that are admittedly a bit niche: do I put my notes in Obsidian or Bear? Where do admin notes live? How do I track the books I read? Or my thoughts on success, scarcity, work, life, and all that. There are probably people in real life who are interested in productivity and examining life this way, but maybe, like me, they keep those opinions elsewhere. I do sometimes talk about productivity. People love discussing it at a high level, but I want details: where do you put your meeting notes? How do you track your to-dos, personal vs team vs project? Every now and then I meet someone at work who enthusiastically walks me through their system, how they streamline OneNote with Teams and Outlook (which I also use at work). I love picking up little bits and pieces. And on that note, I secretly admire people who don’t care about any of this and just… get on with it somehow. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t necessarily need people who know me to know what I think about certain topics. Some things just aren’t for your professional life. For me, there’s a clear separation between work and life, and I like to keep it that way. Even though I do make friends at work, as I wrote about in (my very first!) blog post What Happens When Your 9–5 Defines You I still want a professional boundary between what I say here and who I am at work. I want the freedom to write whatever I want, without worrying whether it’s work-appropriate. If I want to write about weight loss, menopause, or something else like that, I don’t need everyone (not that everyone would be reading it, but it would feel that way to me) at work knowing about it. If I want to write about relationships, I haven’t really, so far, but I want that option, without wondering who might read it. My blog has mostly been about my favourite topic in the world: obsessing over tools - how I use them, why I use them - and optimising processes, alongside examining the life topics I tend to fixate on. I want this blog to be a mix of everything I am. Maybe if I wasn’t working, I’d feel comfortable opening it up at this point. But I haven’t told anyone about this blog at all. And if someone ever read it and worked out it was me, fine. But that’s not likely to happen any time soon. I know a lot of people use their blog as a professional CV. In some ways, I wish I could do that. I even had a domain with my full name, which has just expired. But I don’t think I’d ever be comfortable with it, and I don’t really need a static personal site. I have LinkedIn for that, and, I suppose, I’m quite Gen X in that way. What I do want is a blog. Something I can be prolific on, or not, as much as I want. And that freedom, that anonymity, is what makes it possible.
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