Oh! Happy New Year. I was almost going to add, “same sh*t, different year, hey?”, but then I figured I didn’t want to start the year off that negatively.
Anyways, currently, I am:
Working On
- Switching website hosts. I am trying to put my money where my mouth is, and am currently working on switching to a Canadian host (plus, one that will hopefully let me actually verify my mastodon account. I’m still salty about that.)
- Yes, the host may still use AWS (as an example), but I am trying to take small steps that reduce our reliance on US tech - and the hosting provider part is a piece I can control.
- Coming up with a “strategy” (that’s too big of a word) for blogging and other digital engagement tasks. See also: Thinking About.
Enjoying
- Cory Doctorow’s excellent missive titled Enshittification (StoryGraph | Indigo.ca). You may have heard of it.
- If not: It deals with the, well, enshittification of basically every app and every platform under the sun, plus a host of other topics (digital sovereignty, interoperability, privacy, all that good stuff). My highlighter was red hot after a couple chapters.
Thinking About
- Where to go next, essentially, in the digital realm. Not in the sense of hosting providers, although that’s part of it too. More abstractly, in the sense of:
- What can we do to bring back pieces of the old, good internet? Blogging, Mastodon, what else?
- How can we contribute to dis-enshittification? Unions play a part, as does worker power more broadly, as well as regulation.
- How can we contribute to furthering regulation?
- How can we speak up effectively against the cruelties of the day?
- What hazards are associated with speaking up against the cruelties of the day?
- How can we contribute to furthering digital sovereignty?
- On that note, see Senator Paula Simon’s valiant efforts on getting the Canadian Senate off of Twitter (I will never call it “X”): Mastodon
Following
- The inimitable Senator Paula Simons - https://mstdn.ca/@Paulatics
- Cory Doctorow - https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic