My name is Pablo Morales. I am writing my concerns regarding the immense budget cuts happening across the University of Nebraska system and specifically at my alma mater, the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

I ask Julie Shaffer-Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (shafferj@unk.edu) and Jon Watts-Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance (wattsjc@unk.edu), and Chancellor Douglas Kristenen (kristensend@unk.edu) to please help us find a solution to stop this massive budget cut. So many people's livelihoods are at stake which involve people's education, teaching positions, academic services, etc.

    My Letter to UNK and NU System  

This week I found out that the university "needs" to perform a $3 million budget cut at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK). This is angering and saddening. This creates a huge hole on the UNK campus.         I graduated from the university in 2019. I graduated with a B.A. in Modern Languages. This hurts to hear that many programs such as the French program are being cut. The Modern Language Department was my home during my time at the University. It pushed me out of my comfort zone that led me to even great worldview experiences such as study abroad. The French program in Modern Languages helped prepare me to become a teacher and helped to interact with people of all backgrounds and cultures.

UNK needs to have a complete modern language department to prepare students in this globalized world. Learning a language isn't about learning simply a language. Languages expand a person's worldview. You learn culture, you learn experiences, you learn how different societies work. We can't have young people's viewpoints and perspectives stuck glued to the environment they are in. They need to branch out. Going to college is a place where people learn to build deeper connections with others. This includes people they interact with daily and people who are different from them culturally. The modern languages department is such a vital program.

What hurts more is the attack on the arts and humanities. The arts and humanities are important for a well rounded education. We need students to explore subjects outside of their majors. I learned a lot from the humanities and the arts.

I ask the University of Nebraska not to eliminate these programs. If the entire university system wants to retain more people in Nebraska, before entering, during college, and post college, we must allow these opportunities.

UNK is the only proper public university in Nebraska that geographically serves so many students in the western half of the state. UNK offers so many programs closer to home that many in years past had to attend schools further away from home to enter the programs needed.

I am proud to be a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Kearney. This saddens me to see UNK and the entire university system go through this dark time. Please reconsider all the damage that is to come. Every single higher position university administrator and faculty must fight for the interest of students - current and present.

Representatives of the Nebraska University system need to find and pressure funding from the state. The state has done so much damage from cutting budgets year after year. We must fight those who are against public education and higher education who put us in a chokehold.

We are currently facing so many attacks on public education and higher education from various places. The University of Nebraska system is no exception.

Pablo Morales

University of Nebraska at Kearney Graduate 2019  

 

September 30, 2023

Forest Bed | Permanently Moved | Social Media

Permanently Moved will be celebrating its 250th episode during this next run of 10 shows. I’m looking forward to achieving that!

Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2023/09/30/2331-season-10/

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Season 10!

Sorry about the spotty posting recently – I was enjoying my summer and my holiday. But I’m back now, and ready for season 10!

Permanently Moved will be celebrating its 250th episode during this next run of 10 episodes. I’m looking forward to achieving that. A milestone worth celebrating.

In aggregate, it all feels like a herculean blur of effort. Speaking of effort, making 40 episodes a year instead of 50 is great. Hands down the best decision I made back in January for this year. There’s absolutely no point in killing yourself doing something you enjoy doing. I honestly don’t know how Youtubers who make work for the algorithm and not the audience do it. Week after week, year after year. But they don’t, do they? They either eventually burn out or have public breakdowns.

Anyways.

Reviewing the episodes I’ve put out this year I’m pretty pleased with them. However I have noticed that with 10 episodes less a year to work with, I’ve made less shows that aren’t essays. Not that I’ve ever thought of shows where I speak about life and what I’m up to as filler episodes, far from it. But since this is, after all, a personal podcast I’ll begin season 10 by speaking personally.

Firstly, my ‘slow sad country band’ Forest Bed put out our first EP last month. Your keyword search is Forest Bed, Placeholders EP. Or you can find us on Instagram or Bandcamp.

It’s had some good reviews. Americana UK described the EP’s opening track Footsteps as having the “earthy feel of a long-lost Fairport Convention recording.” and another as having “echoes of Lindisfarne”. Which isn’t bad at all, coming from such an august publication.

Plastic Mag reviewed us and said it captured “a sonic landscape that feels at once timeless and contemporary” and Mesmerized wrote that our EP is “kaleidoscopic” and liked our “slow-paced shoegaze-y formula”. Which is a lot of references for an EP that’s only 4 tracks. We’re obviously doing something right. If genres like Americana and Cosmic Country float your boat then please do check us out and buy a tote or something over on Bandcamp. 

Secondly, back in July I was encouraged to buy Freedom.to. An app that describes itself as ‘The World’s Best App & Website Blocker’. Having used a few different ones over the years, I can confirm that the marketing isn’t a lie.

It’s completely changed my life. Between the hours of 8am and 6.30pm across all my devices – both laptops and my phone – I have the news, social media, and Youtube completely blocked. I’ve spent the whole summer saying to people who send me links (especially tweets) “I can’t see this until after 6.30”. 99% of the time they’ll reply “It doesn’t matter, it wasn’t important anyway”.

A few times recently I’ve gone days without looking at any news or front page headlines at all. News still reaches me of course, either via Discord, Slack or DM. I figure that if someone is going out of their way to tell me about something – especially in person – then it’s probably, actually news. You know?

The first few weeks of using Freedom I felt like an addict with the shakes. Bereft of distraction as everything and everywhere I wasted time on was blocked. Eventually I had to face the fact that there was only work to be done.

After about a month I also noticed that my reflexive and repetitive behavioural loop of checking my phone every five minutes was broken. I wasn’t picking it up and waking the screen or immediately pulling it out of my pocket when standing in line at the supermarket. A good tip if you an android user is to set up focus mode for the same duration as the Freedom block period. This will grey out the apps in the app draw and mute notifications.

It’s somewhat galling to admit that in order to get the most out of the powerful and futuristic computing machines I own, I have to remove functionality from them. But then again Freedom is now doing what my willpower alone couldn’t. So I’m all for it. If you’re tired of internet bullshit then give it a go. Buying this software is worth every penny spent.

Speaking of which, if you also are tired of Adobes rent seeking and chafe at paying for creative cloud then it is worth giving Affinity suite a look. I recently bought Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher in a sale  and they are very capable pieces of software. I helped design an artefact with Rafa the builder for the summer of protocols and I’ve been using it to design my zine.

Which brings me nicely to the last thing I wanted to mention. Issue 7 of Start Select Reset will be going out to my mailing list subscribers next week. It’s all ready to go, I’m just waiting for the local copy shop to get their printer repaired. This issue is called Quiet Quests and features a small LiteLARP or RPG that you can play at work. It uses the last digits of the hour as a random encounter which you check against a table of 60 small acts of kindness to perform in the office environment.

If you want a copy or enjoy the show and would like to help me reach 250 episodes please subscribe and support the show at www.thejaymo.net/support

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We see the weaponization of choice come up often in conservative rhetoric around better policies for families, like paid leave and affordable childcare, and of course abortion rights. The response is often that women should know better, should make better choices, should close their legs, should control the intake of semen, should shut that whole thing down, should make more money before becoming parents/shouldn’t be poor, with the implication that poverty is a choice, and so on.

But of course that’s all a cover for a cultural and political and economic entitlement to women’s bodies serving male pleasure and power…

A former coworker — mother of a young child — once pulled me aside and told me with surprising urgency, don’t give in. Don’t let them talk you into it. Another friend lamented that they were pressured into providing grandkids, then given no support once they did.

One choice becomes a forfeiture of the right to criticise or complain about the outcome — even when you’ve been sold a bill of goods. Because it was “a choice,” the harms you suffer from it are unimportant. (I think of my niece, loaded with debt from a complicated birth.) That was part of the deal, and if you didn’t know that, that’s on you.

This echoes the attitude of, “if you don’t like it here, leave.” A perspective of ownership, judgment, and disdain, devoid of empathy, ripe with entitlement.

As I emphasize in the book, Motherhood is also a set of labors — domestic work, housework, caregiving work, emotional work. We bundle all of that together and call it Motherhood! … By attributing that work and those ways of being and behaving to the feminine condition, it creates a number of pressures felt by all women, but also by men, and by anyone who refuses the gender binary.

I really appreciate this point as someone who is not a mother yet has been socialized towards Mothering behaviors. As a child, I would try to Mother my little sister, and my mom had to remind me she was the mom. In high school, I was the “Band Mom,” doing stuff like learning how to tie a tie so I could help the boys get ready for concerts. In my marriage, I have had to nip impulses to Mother my partner — I don’t want or mean to do it, but still catch the impulse arise sometimes. I also took on a lot of voluntary emotional labor, like sending holiday cards, until I realized I didn’t have to. At my first workplace, I baked and cooked for my coworkers and organized activities that took emotional work and unpaid time to prepare for and do. When I had friends over before COVID, there was always an element of Playing Host, putting everyone else’s experience above my own to be sure their every desire was catered to. My strong socialized impulse towards Mothering is one of the many reasons I’ve chosen not to become a parent; I’m scared I would subsume myself in service.

It’s not that I have a problem with scientists who believe in God. It’s that I get stuck on how some people, be they scientists or not, talk about God.

All of this is raised near the end of the book, and what struck me here in particular was the juxtaposition of two statements made in proximity to each other.

On science:

I carry the coat of science I wear lightly, with an inner lining of humility, as I can see that there is a limit to what even the greatest scientific minds of human history will ever know or understand.

On religion:

I myself have had too many stars align throughout my life to continue to chalk them up to coincidence. I know a divine power beyond my understanding is at work in my life.

Especially given my post about Curt Schilling the other day, you might spot where I’m going with this.

Science the author says they carry with humility, but the very nature of their statement about God is anything but carried with humility. It says unequivocally that God took a direct, personal interest in aligning the metaphorical stars of the author’s success in life.

On the reader:

What do I want for you? I want you to look up and be amazed. I want you to feel supported, less lonely and afraid, a part of rather than apart from.

Given that the author feels that God arranged their life, it can only also be true that if the reader’s life is not one of being supported, is one of being lonely and afraid, is one of being apart from—that, too, must be because God took a direct, personal interest in their life and arranged it that way.

Religious people can’t have both. If God chose to raise you, He also chose to keep others down. They can’t claim to move through the world with humility if God personally took care of their lives while clearly not taking care of the lives of others.

You can’t say you’re chosen and also say you’re humble.

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“God is Change,” Octavia Butler wrote, wresting the poetic truth from the scientific fact that entropy is the ruling law of the universe.

We know that everything changes, that everything passes, transitions from one state to another, from one stage to another — and yet, in our irrational longing for permanence, we try and try to hedge against change, denounce it as deterioration, dread it as a prelude to death.

Nowhere is this dread more acute than in the changes incurred by the body, that crucible of the soul. And no one has offered a greater salve for it than Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018) in one of the essays from her altogether indispensable 1989 collection Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (public library), which also gave us her reflections on writing and where ideas come from.

Living through one of the profoundest changes a human body-soul can undergo — menopause, long cottoned in the euphemism “change of life” — she writes:

The woman who is willing to make that change must become pregnant with herself, at last. She must bear herself, her third self, her old age, with travail and alone. Not many will help her with that birth.

Although biologically particular to female bodies, Le Guin goes on to observe, menopause is a lens on the universal experience of change and our civilizational bias against old age. With her characteristic largehearted, vast-minded, mischievous wisdom, she writes:

If a space ship came by from the friendly natives of the fourth planet of Altair, and the polite captain of the space ship said, “We have room for one passenger; will you spare us a single human being, so that we may converse at leisure during the long trip back to Altair and learn from an exemplary person the nature of the race?” — I suppose what most people would want to do is provide them with a fine, bright, brave young man, highly educated and in peak physical condition… There would surely be hundreds, thousands of volunteers, just such young men, all worthy. But I would not pick any of them. Nor would I pick any of the young women who would volunteer, some out of magnanimity and intellectual courage, others out of a profound conviction that Altair couldn’t possibly be any worse for a woman than Earth is.

What I would do is go down to the local Woolworth’s, or the local village marketplace, and pick an old woman, over sixty, from behind the costume jewelry counter or the betel-nut booth. Her hair would not be red or blonde or lustrous dark, her skin would not be dewy fresh, she would not have the secret of eternal youth. She might, however, show you a small snapshot of her grandson, who is working in Nairobi. She is a bit vague about where Nairobi is, but extremely proud of the grandson. She has worked hard at small, unimportant jobs all her life, jobs like cooking, cleaning, bringing up kids, selling little objects of adornment or pleasure to other people.

With an eye to our troubled cultural model of aging — something Le Guin would address several years later in her exquisite meditation on the art of growing older — she adds:

The trouble is, she will be very reluctant to volunteer. “What would an old woman like me do on Altair?” she’ll say. “You ought to send one of those scientist men, they can talk to those funny-looking green people. Maybe Dr. Kissinger should go. What about sending the Shaman?” It will be very hard to explain to her that we want her to go because only a person who has experienced, accepted, and acted the entire human condition — the essential quality of which is Change — can fairly represent humanity. “Me?” she’ll say, just a trifle slyly. “But I never did anything.”

But it won’t wash. She knows, though she won’t admit it, that Dr. Kissinger has not gone and will never go where she has gone, that the scientists and the shamans have not done what she has done. Into the space ship, Granny.

Complement with Simone de Beauvoir on how to grow old without letting life become a parody of itself, Bertrand Russell on the key to growing old contentedly, and Grace Paley’s almost unbearably wonderful instruction on the art of growing older, then revisit Le Guin on storytelling and the power of language, suffering and getting to the other side of pain, the magic of real human conversation, and the poetry of penguins.

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For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.

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A big clue was them blocking my wife on the Pets4Homes website the day after we picked her up. They were supposed to be sending us the medical and vaccination records but obviously couldn't be bothered or there was something they didn't want us to know. In any event, it meant having to get all of her vaccinations done again as we had no information on what she'd already had.

Roxie was described as being brilliant with other dogs but, as time went on, it became apparent that this wasn't the case. She would be very jealous if Jac was getting any attention and constantly barge him out of the way or go for him.

So, we have had to say goodbye and have given her to another family to love.

When she was getting all the attention, Roxie could be a lovely dog but it seems she needs to be in a single dog household where she is the focus. It just wasn't fair on her or Jac to try to force the issue.

We didn't take anything for her, recouping the money we spent wasn't a priority. We just wanted her to be in a home where she could thrive. Hopefully that can now happen.

Most regular readers will know that I struggle to stick with a single blogging platform. This is because I'm always on the hunt for something better, and I really enjoy learning new tools.

This time around, I've flipped from Blot to Kirby. I have to say, I've really enjoyed learning Kirby - don't get me wrong, it's been a challenge as I'm not a PHP developer, but it's been fun learning.

CMS? Git? Text editor?

I tend to flip-flop around different tools as none of them have a perfect workflow for me. For example, I love the WordPress CMS, but there's lots of features in WP that I don't use, so it would be good if I could edit the CMS UI to only display what I actually use.

I realise that the WP UI can be customised with plugins and code, but it's not really designed to do that. I want something native that I can use how I want.

I also really like the simplicity of a static site generator, like Jekyll or Blot, with a Git workflow that automatically publishes changes to the site.

Sometimes I wanna use a CMS that I can login to, other times I want to write something in my text editor and publish it via Git. It just depends on how I feel. Problem is, nothing I've tried in the past can easily do both.

But Kirby can...

The CMS

Kirby comes with a fantastic CMS, dubbed the "Panel". Out of the box it's really bare bones, but it's designed to be customised to the site owner's needs. To do this, Kirby uses "blueprints" to customise pretty much every aspect of the Panel UI.

For example, here's a look at the homepage of my Panel. I've customised it so that blog posts and drafts take up the majority of the page, but I can also see the pages I have on the site, as well as a handy-dandy Git status for the site too:

Then, when editing posts, like this very post, I have another blueprint. I don't need feature images, template selectors, SEO gubbins and all that other noise WordPress offers. But if I did, I could easily add those fields to my article blueprint. It's all just YAML.

I can go one step further and setup blueprints for pretty much any aspect of the site. For example (with a lot of help from Manu Moreale) I was able to create a blueprint for all the watches in my collection:

This can be done for all kinds of thing. I have a blueprints for images, so whenever I click on an image in the panel, I can add custom attributes like alt, CSS class and lazy loading.

The Kirby Panel is ridiculously powerful - I've never known anything like it. Seriously, it's a joy to use.

Text files and Git?

But what if I want to use good old text files and Git to push changes to my site? You know, kinda like a static site generator. Well dear reader, Kirby has me covered again.

It's not quite the same as an SSG in that there's no frontmatter on Kirby, but there is something very similar. If I want to write a post manually, I'd just create a new sub-folder beneath my home page in the folder tree, then add a file called article.txt so Kirby knows to use my article template to display the page.

Then I just add the contents as follows:

Title: This is the post title
----
Description: This is the meta description for the post
----
Published: 2023-09-30 15:21
----
Tags: Opinion, Meta
----
Text: This is where the main content for the post goes. Just write some **markdown** here and Kirby will do the rest.

It really is as simple as that. You already saw that I have Git integrated into my Kirby Panel thanks to this plugin. So once I'm done, I just push the changes to Github, and Kirby will do the rest.

It's so simple, yet so flexible.

The negatives

The only negative I've really found with Kirby so far, is my lack of knowledge. It was really difficult for me to wrap my head around the various parts of Kirby, but things are starting to click into place and make sense now. It was the same when I started developing with WordPress.

I've already mentioned the huge amount of help I got from my friend Manu, but even if you don't have your very own Manu, like me, the Kirby forums are spectacularly good. The Kirby team have people on the payroll (I think) that assist in the forums. While I was setting up my Kirby site, I asked a lot of questions on the forum. Every single time I received a solution, and I never waited more than a couple of hours for a response.

I've never know anything like it. The Kirby forums are incredibly good.

Price

Kirby isn't free. A license costs are around £100 for a site, which lasts for an entire major release. Kirby is about to hit version 4.0, so if you buy a license now, even though they're still on v3.x, the license will carry over to version 4, which I think is great.

Kirby 3.0 was released in 2019, so the £100 license lasts for multiple years.

I don't actually see this as a negative. Some people might, which is why I'm mentioning it, but I think it's very important to financial support these kind of indie projects. And by having a cost associated with all major releases, it means Kirby has an ongoing source of income.

It's also worth mentioning that you can download and use Kirby indefinitely on a local development environment, it's only when the site is published to the internet that a license is required. Again, I think this is a great as it allows people to try before they buy.

Final thoughts

I'm really happy with my new Kirby powered site. It's so damn flexible, yet powerful. At this point, with the blueprints I've setup, it feels like I have my own, custom-made CMS that's designed just for me.

That's bloody impressive!

You know me, dear reader, a year from now I could well be running something completely different to power this blog. But honestly, I really doubt it as this is the first platform I've used that legitimately ticks all my boxes.

If you're thinking about starting a new blog, or changing the platform your existing blog is based on, I'd strongly suggest you try Kirby.

Lastly, I'd like to thank both Manu Moreale and Sonja Broda. Manu went above and beyond with the help he gave me, and Sonja - who's on the Kirby team - was the person that most often replied to my noobish forum posts. She was always patient with me, and always gave me the solution I needed.

Once I become more comfortable with the inner workings of Kirby, I intend to float around the Kirby forums to try and give something back to the community.

• If I have to use your editor to write on your site, forget it.
• I want to use one editor to write. The one that's wired into the base of my spine. Where I just think of something and somehow it gets from my brain to the screen.
• Every time I have to switch gears because I forgot which editor I'm using, or where I have to go to read and edit something, I lose ideas, or punt on getting the writing right.
• We have too much social media and not enough great reading sites. The reading experience of the web generally sucks.

textarea {
  form-sizing: normal;
}

What's curious is that I obviously forgot about that and used completely different code to achieve the same result in (b)log-In.

The CSS solution is only in Chrome Canary for now (with the right flag enabled) but it will be great if it gets wider support. I primarily use Chromium based browsers (Brave on mobile, Arc on Mac) so will be happy if it just gets support in these, even if flags are required. It will mean I can rip out some clumsy JavaScript and keep things simpler.

Nesting in Fargo#

• Warning: Small spoiler for Season 3.#
• The first scene of Season 3 of Fargo has always puzzled me. It takes place in East Berlin during the Cold War. A citizen is brought before a government official where he's asked to confess to a crime that apparently was actually commited by a different person who used to live at the same address. The story then moves to Minnesota, and there's no further mention of the characters or plot of the first scene. #
• I've always wondered why was that scene there, what it has to do with Fargo. Here's my theory.#
• Every episode of Fargo begins with "This is a true story. The events depicted took place in {location} in {year}. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of the respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred." #
• It's funny because that's what the opening scene is. A supposedly true story (we don't actually know it's true, we suspect not, same as with the show itself) but the names have been changed. #
• Everything in Fargo is nested that way. That's one of the reasons it's so much fun to re-watch, you see things each time you didn't see before.#

 

Stuff I did:

• 6.75 hours writing
• Celebrated my 20th anniversary of blogging!
• Documented my process for writing a long blog post
• Met up with my folks out in Bremerton for a picnic lunch and wander around town
• Took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island for the day ⛴️
• Booked followup appointments — one specialist can’t see me till February 🤨
• Met up with an old colleague for a walk and scored a break from the rain ☔ Also walked with another friend on a surprise sunny afternoon ☀
• Updated quote and scope for graphic design proposal

Dinners:

• Taco Bell crunch wrap supreme
• Leftover tortellini soup + focaccia
• Breakfast burritos
• Toast + creamed tuna with peas
• Fried egg sandwiches
• Roasted potatoes + salad from a bag + store-bought pumpkin pie + whipped cream
• Golden lentil soup (pureed) + flatbread

Reading:

I passed 2000 books read on Goodreads sometime this month! 📚

• Added 5 books to my TBR (total = 455) — Annalee Newitz’s Stories Are Weapons sounds like it’ll be rad, and I didn’t realize that Heather Cox Richardson had a new book out this week!
• DNF’d Ask A North Korean because the library wanted it back and I’m too busy right now

Words I looked up / concepts I learned:

• Narrowcast
• Subaltern
• Plutocratic
• Kluge
• Ne plus ultra
• Munificence
• Off-piste
• Ineluctably
• Kabuki
• NB
• Brio
• Palaver
• Anthophobia 😱🌸
• Solastalgia

More language things I learned:

• Only refer to Native Hawaiian peoples as Hawaiian, call people who live there Hawai’i residents (via)
• Prefer “incarceration,” “imprisonment,” or “detention” to “internment” when speaking about WWII Japanese American mass incarceration (via)
• Erin Kissane’s introduction to her reporting on Meta’s part in the Myanmar Rohingya genocide is a study in treating names as important 👏 Also I’ve been pronouncing Myanmar wrong.

Pretty stuff I saw:

• Chiura Obata, Glorious Struggle, Mono Crater, Great Nature, Storm on Mount Lyell from Johnson Peak, El Capitan
• Dan Coe’s LiDAR river delta images

When we got back to the apartment the night devolved into a makeup free-for-all as my friends tried out their new products. They quickly ran out of space on their own faces to test out all the looks they wanted and ended up using me as a test canvas. Over the next three hours, I sat as they patted, dabbed, blended, painted, and rubbed my face with all sorts of foreign products: primer, foundation, concealer, contour, eyeshadow, mascara, eyeliner, brow gel, and glitter are the ones I can remember. Throughout the ordeal my friends explained to me what each product was and showed me how it accentuated certain aspects of my face. It was surprisingly fun and educational, even if I didn't dig the post-rave raccoon look.²

We must have been a funny sight, three best friends fully made-up playing Wavelength in the wee hours of the morning, howling with laughter and surrounded by mountains of products. Moments like these remind me how I recognize true friendships—even while doing some otherwise relatively mundane tasks, we delighted in each others' company and made some unforgettable memories. I don't know when the next time we'll all be together is. I miss them so much already, their warm mirth, quiet kindness, and steadfast support.

🥠

Apparently my old car broke down while I was gone, so my parents decided to buy a Tesla to replace it. This news would have thrilled adolescent me, back when I idolized the cars' futuristic design and underdog status, but now that Elon has outed himself as the world's most insufferable manchild (to put it lightly), I'm a lot more ambivalent about this purchase. If anything I think I might even feel a little bit ashamed to drive one of 'his' cars, to support someone whose idiotic theatrics play on a world stage. Am I excited to finally drive a car with a rearview camera? Of course. Am I still going to miss my early-2000s car with its physical knobs and dials from an automaker not spearheaded by a world-famous clown? You bet.

I think it's largely too late for that, the proverbial genie is well and truly out of the bottle, but that doesn't mean those who want to can't embody the spirit of the old web.

I recently saw a definition of Web 1.0 that amounted to "a few creating pages for the many" — or should that be as many as were online at the time. The defining characteristic of Web 1.0 was that it was small; I think we can all agree on that.

Web 2.0 blew things apart: it became "many creating more for the many" but centralised on a few services — platforms filled with "User Generated Content". Everything became a matter of scale: page views, MAUs, follower counts, ad dollars.

The thing is, even back in Web 1.0, everything was User Generated Content; it's just that the U changed from "user of the web" to "user of services and platforms". ¹ Those pushing the reclamation agenda object to the transition from user to used. The goal, in my opinion, is actually to reclaim the U of UGC.

From its early days where being 'a user' simply meant someone who interacted with a computer or software to perform tasks, the term became derogatory, often employed to imply those who merely used a system or application were idiots. There are those who don't want to be users of big tech — just to have their data mined — the whole "you are the product" debate.

There are advantages to being on the big platforms and networks:

• scale
• scope
• audience
• convenience

but they come at a cost:

• noise & spam
• increased abuse
• loss of control and privacy

For many (or most) the trade-offs are worth it. No matter how loudly the vocal minority cry foul it won't be enough to persuade the rest that they should take action. If they gain more than are 'harmed' by being on such a platform there is no perceived reason to leave.

It's ironic that the easier it becomes to create a self-owned and self-controlled presence on the web it seems the less people want, or can't be bothered, to do it. It is still invariably easier to create a profile on a platform.

Small or slow

There are various ideas for how things should be, often called the slow web or the small web.

I prefer the "personal web", although it comprises idea of both.

The personal web is, by its very nature, small. Individual sites rather than large networks. People not platforms.

The personal web is also slow, built on meaningful, intentional actions — not on the consumption of endless streams.

It is reading, watching or listening to things of your own discovery rather than those forced upon you. It is hand-curated with personal recommendations instead of an algorithm.

The personal web can look and work however you like — it is yours after all. There are no strict rules but there are best practices, guidelines.

None of this is to say that the large web, the fast web, doesn't have its place and that we can't interact with it when it suits us. It is a choice.

1. I'm not going to get into the whole AI/Machine Generated Content thing here ↩