cool links V: RTO brain drain, link rot, feeding bullshit to AI, narcissism
What I recently watched or read worth sharing:
WebOrigami is a programming language aimed to make HTML and CSS a bit easier and more cohesive for multiple pages, especially for beginners. Quote: "The web needs better ways to create sizable, expressive sites at low cost and without entanglements." I haven't tried it yet, but I found it interesting to see.
Americans spend more years being unhealthy than people in any other country by Beth Mole. Quote: "By 2019, Americans had a gap between their lifespan and their healthspan of 12.4 years, the largest gap of any of the 183 countries included in the study. The second largest gap was Australia's, at 12.1 years, followed by New Zealand at 11.8 years and the UK at 11.3 years.."
How to disappear forever by S. A. Smith. Fantastic article about how the internet seems to remember forever, except for increasingly paywalled articles, restructured links, deleted websites and similar things causing link rot. A mentioned study says 38 percent of webpages accessible in 2013 are not accessible today.
Companies issuing RTO mandates “lose their best talent” by Scharon Harding. Pretty self explanatory; it's good to see this stuff coming out, because employers like mine often needlessly look up to big US companies and their trends despite having zero things in common, and they'll parrot their bullshit too, so it's good to have something at hand against this. Quote: "Return-to-office (RTO) mandates have caused companies to lose some of their best workers, a study tracking over 3 million workers at 54 "high-tech and financial" firms at the S&P 500 index has found. These companies also have greater challenges finding new talent, the report concluded." -> Related article: Tech worker movements grow as threats of RTO, AI loom. If I ever write a followup to my 'tech utopia fantasy is over' post, these will definitely be included.
Why Not Resolve To Drive Less by Laura Michet. I think it's great to think that way; when people think of New Years' resolutions, they often think of giving up the usual "vices" like alcohol, sugar, or whatever. But isn't driving somewhat of a vice, too? Similar to other things that clearly harm us and the environment. We should look less to what childhood/bible definitions and examples of vices are and think critically of what else we can do to improve our lives or environment.
How I’m trying to use BlueSky without getting burned again by Chris Holdgraf. I think if you indeed need and want to continue to hold on to social media, this is a good post to read on where to draw a line, what to keep in mind and how to get the most out of it. Quote: "Don’t build your castle in a kingdom that somebody else controls, because they can take it away from you. Instead, build a castle on defensible land, and leverage platforms to bring more ideas, people, value, etc to your castle." Essentially, it is explaining the advantages of POSSE.
What I Learned Reporting in Cities That Take Belongings From Homeless People by Nicole Santa Cruz. Quote: "Punitive policies, whether they originate with Trump or local governments, make homeless people more invisible, which will continue to erode public compassion, said Sara Rankin, a law professor at Seattle University who studies the criminalization of homelessness. “All of those approaches are designed to create the illusion that the problems are getting better, when really it’s just sweeping human beings under the rug without regard to their humanity, without regard to what really happens to them,” she said."
Quixotic by Marcus Butler is a project that aims to feed fake content to bots and robots.txt-ignoring LLM scrapers.
Adult Child of Narcissist Bingo by Bruce Beaumont. Unfortunately, I relate and I think it's an important topic to talk about and spread. I have also read that book and over 10 years ago, spent a lot of time on r/raisedbynarcissists. I am also No Contact with everyone in my family except my mother, which is Low Contact (about every few weeks or at most). Related, Madisyn Brown's recent video about this topic was very touching and relatable, and I hope everyone who did not have to grow up like that watches it; maybe it drives home the point that those are not normal disagreements people with abusive relatives talk about. Everything I built and succeeded in was not because of, or with, but despite my parents.
I Was Wrong About the Ethics Crisis by Moshe Y. Vardi. He talks about how he has changed his mind about ethics in tech, feeling like people serve the tech instead of the other way around and how the business models are unethical. Highly recommended.
Published