jayeless@dreamwidth

One of the reasons I started this blog is that I'd come across the concept of the IndieWeb and really liked it. I went into some detail about that in my first post here. The principle of the IndieWeb that appealed to me most of all was the one about owning your content, instead of "sharecropping" it across half a dozen more narrowly focused sites and giving them control over the sole copy of all my data.

So, I brushed off my domain name, which I'd kept paid up but not really used for years. ( Read more... )

Originally posted at micro.jayeless.net.

Usually when I do a linkpost I mostly link to the long posts, but if I do them more often, I figure I can afford to link to the short posts, too. So here you are:

• I linked to an interesting article by Usman Khawaja on the hostility of Australian cricket to players of immigrant backgrounds, and how this is sloooowly changing. (No real point linking to my post I guess, that just goes straight to the article.)
• A post about "all X is not Y" not meaning the same as "not all X is Y". Spawned some discussion in the comments, too. I want to clarify I don't usually complain about minor variations in the use of language, but this one annoys me because I always assume the other person meant what they literally wrote and I have to go back and read it again once I realise that can't be right.
• I finished R.F. Kuang's The Burning God (the last in her military fantasy trilogy) and I posted a review of it to my homepage. I liked it a lot better than the second book but it still was not perfect.
• Lastly, a post about cats' thermoneutral zone, which turns out to be much higher than humans', so I guess I should stop worrying when Gidget wants to go out on scorching hot days 😁

Hello! Remember how I said I was going to try linking to my micro.blog posts over here? Well I still intend to, but obviously it's not something I'm really great at. Anyway, since it's been so long (nearly a month 😬) I'm just going to link a few of the selected highlights. Feel free to go to my micro.blog's homepage and browse through all the posts if you want to see everything (including cat photos, some links to interesting articles/games/apps, some linguistics musings, some book reviews, you know the drill).

• Dec 12 - a titleless post about changing email addresses: I've been moving away from Gmail and Outlook to ProtonMail, for the better privacy implications, and I wrote a quick post about some of my experiences actually changing email addresses (some sites have better ways of dealing with this than others, and there are even some – like Spotify – that I don't think let me change at all)
• Dec 15 - Perfection isn't necessary, just try your best: a post about how in most circumstances you don't need to be perfect (with a new diet, fitness routine, moving away from privacy-violating online services, etc.) to experience the benefits
• Dec 24 - Upgrading my iPhone: a post about how long I'd had the old one (3½ years), what I was doing with it now I was no longer going to be using it (giving it to my sister, who was soldiering on with a barely-functional Galaxy S4), and what new phone I got (iPhone 12 Mini)
• Dec 29 - Thoughts on gender and (my) pronouns: some reflections on why I felt uncomfortable specifying pronouns on things like my Mastodon profile (my reasons are complicated so I'm not going to summarise them in a one-liner, please read the post if you want to know)
• Dec 31 - Reflecting on 2020: the obligatory end-of-year post talking about my experience of the pandemic, relatives' deaths and near-deaths, etc. (it was mostly not a happy year for me)
• Jan 7 - Stray thoughts on the storming of the US Capitol: mostly thoughts on US imperialism, the rise of the far-right globally
• Jan 8 - Experimenting with Gemini: if you haven't heard of Gemini, it's a super lightweight alternative to HTTPS optimised for text posts. I think it's a cool concept, and I'm hoping it becomes easier for non-ultra-technical people to participate in Gemini space

As per usual feel free to comment here if you find anything you'd like to make a comment on!

I came across an excellent (if disturbing) article today on the hidden algorithms that trap people in poverty. The examples given are US-specific, but the issues raised would be relevant in many other countries. It talks about two major types of algorithms that screw people over:

1. credit scores, and broader "worthiness scores", that can determine access to housing, employment, etc.
2. algorithms used by state institutions (or the private providers the state has outsourced its responsibilities to) to determine access to welfare, health care, and access to public services generally

One of the issues is that these algorithms are being used so that nobody can be held accountable, even when the consequences of a bad decision literally ruin lives. If a disabled person gets cut off from all aid due to a "faulty" algorithm, and suffers a health emergency, homelessness, or even dies as a result… then as far as the institution that made that callous decision is concerned, it's pretty sad, but it's not their fault. The algorithm did it! And the fact that humans configure algorithms and make the purposeful choice not to review their decisions? Well, you know, let's just ignore that. It's the kind of system you arrive at when the rich and powerful see the disadvantaged as statistics, or even mere burdens on the budget, and not as real people who deserve the same level of dignity and quality of life that the privileged themselves enjoy.

( Another important point is the way that big data... )

I'm going to have to get better about sharing content over here more regularly if it's something I intend to do (which it is, at least for the moment). At any rate, here's some of the selected highlights of things I've posted on Micro.blog in the last couple of weeks.

I posted briefly about the government announcing a route for the Melbourne airport rail link, including the thought that their proposed fare would not be very tempting for airport workers.

I published a review of Más allá del invierno (In the Midst of Winter) by Isabel Allende. I thought the book was "just OK", basically.

Now finally a meaty, lengthy post – I talked about my experience of my first two weeks on Micro.blog, including how I felt about them not supporting "likes". Dreamwidth got a mention, as another platform that doesn't support likes, and therefore forces people to use their actual words to express their appreciation for things. (Honestly, in the week since I made this post, I think I've been even more persuaded that making people comment instead of clicking a like button is a good thing. There's just so much more human connection bound up in words than there is in a "So-and-so liked this.")

I made another lengthy post about interring my Grandma's ashes, after she died in September and Covid-19 restrictions meant even the funeral was severely limited and we put off the ashes a couple of months. Honestly, while I completely understand why we needed the lockdown and am reaping the benefits (with the rest of the state) now, not being allowed to visit my grandma in her final months and then all the hassle about the funeral still really stings.

This was a short link post but it generated some discussion – about the first day of the week in different countries.

A couple of days ago I wrote a long post about my thoughts on cast-iron cookware after five weeks of use – after I was persuaded to replace an old worn-out non-stick pan with cast iron by an Adam Ragusea video. I'm not a cast-iron evangelist now but overall I think I made a good choice. Click the link for my (very, very) detailed explanation.

…and that's about it, for posts I'll call out individually! But you might also just want to have a quick scroll through my pet photos, my food photos, my "today I learned" microposts, or this "site updates" category (this latter one only if you're interested in why someone would make a personal, static homepage and a blog or how the two could be integrated together).

Like last time, if you have any thoughts you'd like to share on any of these entries, feel free to just comment here (Micro.blog accepts Webmentions for comments, but those are hard to send if you don't already have a setup geared to send Webmentions, which you'd probably know if you did). No pressure, though.