cool links II: big tech and your rights, food, the impact of names and more
What I recently read/saw worth sharing:
- Unpersoned by Cory Doctorow. This is an interesting article about how now that our offline, private lives are increasingly reliant on technology, big tech giants owning those tech solutions need to be mindful about who they're cutting off from their service, how, and why. They are now up there with electricity and water companies for many people, so simply cutting people off with no way to reconnect or gather their data has intense consequences.
- Supermarkets and international farming corporations are evil by Grim, about the environmental and personal consequences of supermarkets being able to shop around for the cheapest price instead of supporting local farms and companies.
- Science of Chess: Reflex Epilepsy induced by Chess by Lichess.org / NDpatzer. Interesting study about a specific type of thinking during the middle game of chess causing seizures in some epilepsy patients.
- The Problem with Building Good Habits by Stephan Joppich. I had already linked to it in a previous post of mine, but felt like sharing it once again. It's about the somewhat inflexible nature of habit tracking and the risk to become obsessed with a streak, among other things.
- What’s in a name? by vaudevilleghost. A very interesting read about names and what they mean to people. I never connected with my birth name and chose to legally change it years ago, and I am always supportive in people thinking about if they really like their names and exploring different nicknames or names altogether.
- Weird Web October by Jay Zuerndorfer. October has already begun, but maybe some of you still wanna join in; it's similar to Inktober, where you try to participate to make something each day fitting the topic. In this case, you make websites.
- I've built a city, now it needs residents by Polymathematics. Basically an interconnected web of users who annotate stuff they come across online for others in the same network to find. You can basically see the footsteps of others who have read this article or saw this website before, and what they thought of it, or links to further stuff. This has been tried before by different people and of course harbours the risk of hate speech and harassment, but I think it's still cool and a worthwhile experiment.
- Book Notes of "Offline Matters" by Isabella. I have not read the book this is about, but even these notes and excerpts seem very intriguing and I agree with it. I might read it, too.
- Putting the "Person" in "Personal Website" by Jim Nielsen. About personal websites being for everyone, don't have to be so performative as social media presences and can be messy, unfinished, raw, and for fun, and don't have to be monetized.
- Is It A Right For a Country to Exist? by Artemis. A beautifully written anarchist piece that I largely agree with. As a German living in Germany, I find myself repressed in expressing being against the war or for Palestinian people. I've seen how the police in the cities I frequent react in a fascist way to any kind of anti-war or pro-Palestine content and it is scary.
Published 06 Oct, 2024, edited 8 months ago