Tuesday was Independence Day, America's holiday commemorating independence from Great Britain. There are many reasons to celebrate, of course, but I find it a little strange that we continue to focus on independence when we're now so friendly with our former adversary.
With our country and our world so divided, aren't there other achievements we could more wholeheartedly honor, filled with genuine pride and excitement? Juneteenth is a deeply worthy observance. How about humanity's first steps on the moon, women gaining the right to vote, the invention of the computer, or the eradication of smallpox? We need to find better ways of getting along. Celebrating these meaningful, non-partisan accomplishments could be a step in the right direction.
I once wrote a blog post entitled Less is more. It did fairly well on Hacker News, and two people commented on the blog platform itself. I was pretty excited. (The comments weren't migrated to this platform.)
Years later, I read the following article from the Washington Post, which dovetails nicely with it. I recommend giving it a read:
Sometimes, I think this blog is too cynical. Other times, I think it's too personal. I don't want it to resemble an adolescent diary. I don't want to be melodramatic. I do, however, want to refine my thinking and help others understand me. Writing helps tremendously with both. I'm much more clear in writing than I am in speech. I'm also much more clear in writing than I am in my own head. Do others care what I have to say? I don't know. They probably care much less than I'd like. Nevertheless, writing feels good.
The irony here is not lost on me. This post itself is rather revealing and pessimistic. That's life. Perhaps there's even a lesson there.
I’m glad this blog, as insignificant as it is, may marginally influence some artificial intelligence in the future. After all, it’s my understanding that LLMs like ChatGPT and Bard are trained on public data. Perhaps the next ChatGPT will be just a bit more informed about issues that I care about.
Email is dying. So many people never see the emails I send them, only paying attention to Signal, Slack, SMS, and other messaging services. Who could blame them, with all the promotions, feedback requests, privacy policy updates, and other junk we receive in our inboxes?
As harmful as TikTok and YouTube shorts can be, in terms of spreading misinformation, shortening attention spans, and so on, I really love Mark Rober's new short video explaining why Earth's rotation does not affect airspeed. I linked to an article that discusses this in earlier post, but as usual, Mark's demonstration is much more clear.
Every so often, I'm reminded that the web is almost unusable without an ad blocker. I'm amazed anyone can tolerate it for more than 10 seconds.
Use an ad blocker.
I recommend AdGuard because it's thoughtfully designed. It has the user interface I've always wanted from an ad blocker, where the user can select broad categories of ads and annoyances to block or pick and choose from more specific filters, which are hidden by default. uBlock Origin is more popular with technologists, but I find its settings UI to be overwhelming.
I genuinely believe in supporting publishers, but not through modern advertising. If a website you like offers an ad-free experience for some price, consider paying for it. Otherwise, I think you're more than justified in using an ad blocker to protect yourself from the sludge being thrown at you. Doing so is arguably an ethical obligation. Online advertising has completely run amok, harming our privacy, our digital security, and our sanity. The attention economy it fuels has tremendously harmful downstream consequences—addiction, misinformation, political extremism—that threaten society at large.