I’m reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It’s my first Sanderson and I’m a little over 300 pages in. It’s been on my TBR for a few months and finally decided to take it on.

Chim Chim chiminy, Chim Chim chiminy, Chim Chim chiree

I got a French press and used it for awhile. I’m extremely lazy though and got tired of having to clean the coffee grounds out of the screen. That’s something I didn’t consider before buying it. I switched to a chemex that I like much better. Yeah, there are disposable filters but it works better for me. If I were starting over, I’d probably just get some kind of pour over thing that fits over my mug. That would take up less space than the chemex.

I’ve been feeling the same way the last couple of weeks. I finally got so fed up with the toxicity of Instagram that I uninstalled it from my phone. And since finding Lemmy, I’ve disengaged and deleted my Reddit account. So I’m trying to figure out what to do on this Internet now. And it really feels like how I used to use it. I’m finding niche blogs and sites that people post on Lemmy. I’ll add them to my bookmarks so that I can remember to visit them again. I’m actually reading the articles and not just jumping straight into the comments. It’s like going back in time 12 years. And I don’t know if this is just in my head, but I feel like I’m regaining some of my ability to focus and increasing my attention span that’s been atrophied over the last decade. I just spent most of my weekend building and playing around with a new homelab server… Something I would have done years ago but would have been nearly impossible to do if I was stuck scrolling through the dopamine machine that is Instagram and Reddit.

If you’re dissatisfied with the results you get on Google or you’re looking for websites that might not be in Google’s search results, I recently came across this site: https://www.marginalia.nu/. The search engine touts itself as focusing on non-commercial content. It really makes me nostalgic for the old Internet… Back when you could find some random person’s blog about something really specific. They weren’t trying to get monetized or fit into some SEO algorithm. They just wanted to spread their passion for growing different varieties of butter beans, free of charge and subscription.

Yup… when the only rule in the engine is “maximize profits”, this is what we get. We need a version 2 that includes some kind of rule that also incentivizes “do good for the world” or something to that effect… however you quantify that. I’m not hopeful that iteration will happen though. It’s hard, if not impossible, for a system to change itself. It’d be like changing the rules of Monopoly while playing it where the current winner has the most leverage and influence on how the rules change. If you’re already winning, you don’t want to change anything unless it makes you win more. You certainly wouldn’t want to change it in a way that made it harder for you. So the only way to change the rules in a way that benefits the current “losers” is if all those losers unite to overrule the leverage of the winner, which is why the winner puts in so much effort to keep the losers divided and arguing amongst themselves about what the problem is and what rules to implement or change.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I’ve bought at least two bags from ebags.com that I’ve been very happy with. The first bag was for a large 17 inch laptop I used in college. It was one of the only places I could find that carried laptop backpacks that could fit a thick 17 inch laptop. That bag is still getting use when I travel with very little signs of wear. I was so happy with it that when I needed a new carryon bag, I went back to ebags and got their Mother Lode Travel Backpack. It looks like they have a lifetime warranty for their ebags brand products.

I really like the size and aesthetic of the Field Notes notebooks. Small and thin enough to fit in a pocket. Maybe not as durable as some might be looking for. I kind of like the weathered look they get after some use though.

For something larger and more durable, I’ve liked these Miliko brand notebooks. The paper is nice to write on and doesn’t bleed through.