It's fascists all the way down

Continue reading

Is it time to quit Twitter?

Continue reading

It's time to be less plugged in

Continue reading

It's been a while since I posted a 2006 blog style rant. It's probably full of 2006 blog style typos too. Enjoy.

Facebook: Do I even need to go here?

Google: Dropped the “Do No Evil” schtick years ago.

Apple: Uses Chinese prison labor to make $1000 status symbols

AirBnB …

Continue reading

Book Review: How to Do nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

I get the feeling that her publisher titled the book, as “How to do nothing” is not a descriptive title. I was expecting a how-to book more along the lines of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. Instead …

Continue reading

It's not paranoia if they really are watching you.

Yesterday I bought this plumbing part at Lowe's. I did not search for it online, watch a YouTube video or in any way disclose online that I had a need related to plumbing repair. It's a $7 part and I knew …

Continue reading

I read an article over the weekend about how the overwhelming number of choices you get when using Amazon and other sites is causing people to turn away from those sites. I just spent 15 minutes trying to find that article again and I can’t. So maybe I dreamed …

Continue reading

A couple of years ago I occupied myself while Michelle was recovering from cancer treatment by finally organizing the 5000 odd baseball cards I had in boxes in the closet. At the time I thought I was just making use of the downtime to downsize a bit since we were …

Continue reading

Sometime in the last week or so Facebook has killed the one feature I rely on to use it. As I've documented here previously, I unfollowed everybody on Facebook a couple of years ago. It renders my Facebook wall useless. Many days the only updates on my wall are a …

Continue reading

We Should Replace Facebook with Personal Websites

I've been saying this for a while now.

2012 - Own Your Words
2012 - Social Media Blues
2013 - Blogs Are Not Dead
2014 - Blogs Are Back
2016 - There Are No Christmas Card Friends on facebook
2018 - Social Media Still Sucks

So welcome to the …

Continue reading

Way back in the day when blogs ruled the Internet getting admitted to the BlogAds network was kind of a big deal. It meant that you could start to make some cash from ads on your blog, and it meant your blog mattered at some level since advertisers were willing …

Continue reading

As I've discussed previously, I found a happy medium with Facebook by reducing my friend count from about 500 to 225, and then unfollowing every one of them except my wife and kids. (They might post 5 times a month total). The real value I get from Facebook isn't in …

Continue reading

Today is Throwback Thursday, so I'm going old school and sharing a link the way we used to do it back in the olden days before Facebook and Twitter. Going viral back then meant hundreds or thousands of people independently deciding to write about your blog post on the same …

Continue reading

Facebook gave me a birthday reminder today for a Facebook friend that I haven't seen online in 2+ years. We were close enough to "real" friends that we made several attempts at getting together in real life for lunch or happy hour, but we never quite got organized enough to …

Continue reading

I was reading the news online recently and realized something. I've been making an effort to get my news from the local paper via their online edition. By online edition I mean a digital representation of the day's newspaper, not the website. I literally flip through the pages, just like …

Continue reading

The entire attention economy is based on the idea that "engagement" (whatever that is) has some monetary value. Likes and favorites are worth something, and thus brands are willing to spend big bucks on Twitter and Facebook ads. Well, some brands. Proctor & Gamble is not convinced.

What if the entire …

Continue reading

The entire attention economy is based on the idea that "engagement" (whatever that is) has some monetary value. Likes and favorites are worth something, and thus brands are willing to spend big bucks on Twitter and Facebook ads. Well, some brands. Proctor & Gamble is not convinced.

What if the entire …

Continue reading

As I've written previously, I've changed how I use Facebook. It's mostly about Groups and Events for me. I unfollowed everybody except my wife and kids. Now, when I want to check in with my friends I simply go straight to their walls or I use the "New Posts" filter …

Continue reading

Facebook was not hacked by Cambridge Analytics. Hacking implies that CA broke into their data or otherwise circumvented Facebook somehow to get personal data on 5 million Americans. What actually happened is far, far worse.

The system worked exactly as designed. Facebook is in the data collection and sales business …

Continue reading

I read City by Clifford Simak recently. If you haven't read it, it is a dystopian cold war era novel in which man abandons the cities due to fear of nuclear war. Society breaks down as everybody lives in isolation, population dwindles, and eventually most humans abandons the earth, leaving …

Continue reading