Quote – Tech in the Trenches

Deciding to read it later, or not

On November 26, 2022

Whenever I see something online that I think I want to read, I put it in Instapaper — and then I try to leave it for a while. Often when I visit Instapaper the chief thing I do is delete the pieces I only had thought I needed to read. So for me it’s not just a read-later service, it’s a don’t-read-later service. But that only works if I don’t go there too often. I try to catch up with my Instapaper queue once a week at most.
this and that – Snakes and Ladders

This is the reading version of grabbing an item at a store and carrying it around while I shop. If I look at the item when I am ready to check out, I buy it. More often, by the time I’m ready to check out, whatever impulse that overcame me to grab the item is gone. So it stays at the store.

Audiences

By Carl

On January 3, 2022

In Links and Quotes

I don’t want to be in the audience of someone who’s only trying to build an audience
Jack Baty

Have a blog and write in it

By Carl

On October 27, 2021

In Links and Quotes

If you notice, the internet of today is basically made of a couple of big websites that try to gather every content there is. Have you ever talked to an older person that thinks Facebook IS the internet? Yes, that’s exactly what I am talking about.
“If everybody starts to create their own website, we will start the long and essential process of taking back the control of the Web: the Web is ours to use it as we like, and not to be controlled by half dozen of mega industries with their opaques algorithms.”
Why you should have a blog (and write in it)

I’m trying to take more of this advice to heart. Less social media and endless streams of outrage flying by and more longer, more considered writing.

‘Three thousand people did not die’

By Carl

On September 18, 2018

In Links and Quotes

The empty shoes that lined up in front of the capitol in San Juan belong to people who are still among us. They did not die; they will come and step back into their shoes. They will walk back up functional roads and sit in their houses where the electricity is working. They will laugh with relief that this was not a real disaster, nothing like Katrina. They will fill glasses with water that is safe to drink. They will live on an island where the recovery has been progressing with alacrity and competence.

Source: ‘Three thousand people did not die’ – The Washington Post

As brutal as it is brilliant.