/reader

Offense/Defense: Paint the contrast between Trump and the Democratic nominee focus on “gettable votes” (offense), combat lies, attacks and smears using social media (defense)

Create: Your video/song/paper/sign can help convince others, organize your own events, use your social media to get the word out

Register: Get more people registered to vote

Hosting: Organize house parties, have events for volunteers

Battlegrounds: Go help in the battleground states if you possibly can, work phone banks, write letters

Money: Give money, let others know you gave money (to encourage/motivate them), hold fundraising events

The Campaign: Get out and work as a volunteer, and campaigns need to support their volunteers

Voting: Take people to the pools, support early voting, make sure everyone you know votes

Election Night: Be with friends

Okay people – now get to work!

I picked up the post again yesterday (2nd May) and started updating it with everything that’s changed. As it happened, today I received a gentle prod from Manuel about the lack of updates to the site, and I knew I had to finish it off and get it out there. Slay the proverbial dragon, as it were…

I will ask again at the end, but I’m going to ask up front, because I want you thinking about it, and because I want to know:

“How are you doing the internet in 2024?”

And, finally, before we get into the main article I have one last caveat for you: I’m boring. While you might find some useful tidbits here, I do not expect you to be wowed or find anything mindblowingly new. That’s one reason I want to hear what you’re doing - so I can find all the cool and interesting things more interesting people are doing with the internet.

Browser (Desktop)

I’ve switched from “regular” Firefox, to LibreWolf, which is a “custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom”. So far it’s going pretty well, though I have turned off one of the default settings for my convenience. Otherwise, it comes out of the box pretty much how I had customised my Firefox setup, plus a few extra tweaks, so it’s all very familiar and mostly just saves me tweaking things further.

Start page

I don’t really have a “start page” as such, but I do have several pinned tabs - email/Mastodon/etc. I think the closest to a start page out of the pinned tabs is RS.S JOY.lol, which is a page listing some really enjoyable sites/blogs and their latest posts (via RSS, hence the name) which was made by Sara Joy

Search

I’ve been using using DuckDuckGo as my main search engine on all my devices for 7 or 8 years now. I can’t remember the last time I had to use anything else to find what I was looking for, and I also can’t remember the last time I willingly browsed to the Google home page. I do keep meaning to try some of the other “alternative” engines, like Ecosia and others but I’ve never had enough reason to.

Extensions

I keep this very light at the moment:

• uBlock Origin (comes with LibreWolf by default)
• Decentraleyes
• 1Password^[1]
• Multi-Account Containers

Browser (Mobile)

It’s Safari, because it pretty much has to be.

Extensions

• 1Password, again
• Noir
• Hush

Blogging

Sites

I have my main blog, my “hobby blog”, The Underground, and a Micro.blog site which I mostly use as a GoodReads replacement, or for writing something I want to cross-post to social media. That’s probably enough blogs for one person? What can I say? I like blogs ¯\(ツ)/¯.

My goal is to have these be the primary places I publish to on the internet; I should be reaching for one of these places before considering publishing directly on social media or another site or service. Some stuff won’t fit, and that’s fine in the moment, but maybe it should also prompt thoughts about how I can make it fit. I’ve been adding more and more content to my site(s) - some of it just for me - and I plan to keep expanding where it makes sense.

One problem I am running into is deciding which blog a post idea should be published to. This is primarily a problem choosing between my main site and The Underground. More than one draft post is stuck in the limbo between the two sites. Heck, this post has spent 3 months in limbo before I decided it was best placed on The Underground.

Tools

Drafting Posts

Primarily I’m drafting blog posts in Obsidian. I have a QuickAdd plugin action linked to a template, that pre-populates some of the frontmatter and creates the note in my Blog Drafts folder. I can use Obsidian on both a desktop and on mobile, with full syncing, so it works well for me. If I’m at work, with no Obsidian, I’ll usually use VS Code.

Hobby Blog posts are usually short, or just a photo with a caption. For these I’m content to use the Micro.blog app.

Publishing

Publishing blog posts to my main blog or The Underground involves taking the finished draft and getting it into the Github repository for the relevant site. I generally use one of 3 methods:

• If I’m on my personal laptop, I’ll copy the file into the folder structure and then use Git from the command-line.
• If I’m on mobile, I’ll either use Working Copy to check the files in, or I’ll use IndieKit.
• If I’m on my work laptop (it happens sometimes) then I’ll use IndieKit or the GitHub web-based editor.

If the post requires any images then I need to upload these to my Azure blob storage container before I can use them. For this I use Azure Storage Explorer (which makes it a “from my personal laptop” only task for now).

Bookmark posts are made using the IndieKit UI, or an iOS Shortcut that interacts with IndieKit.

Book-related posts are made using [Epilogue]((https://epilogue.micro.blog/), a companion app for Micro.blog.

Reading Feeds/Read It Later

I’ve jumped back to using Inoreader full-time for my feed reading. Feedbin was nice but it didn’t offer me enough to warrant keeping around when I still have another 8 months on my Inoreader subscription.

I’m also trying to use FraidyCat to encourage me to go to visit the sites I am reading, rather than just getting their content through RSS. I’m still in the process of deciding which sites are going to be added into FraidyCat.

For Read It Later needs I half-heartedly use Omnivore. This isn’t a knock on Omnivore itself - I haven’t used enough to judge one way or the other - I just don’t find myself needing to use it very often. If I’m going to “read it later” I’ll usually leave a tab open in the browser. I have my bookmarks feed hooked up to Omnivore, meaning I don’t really need to worry about using extensions or anything to save interesting links - I just have to post them to my website.

Cross-posting

To cross-post new posts to social media I’m currently using Micro.blog for most things. I went through a phase where I was going to replace Micro.blog for something else, because it was very intermittent about picking up new posts on my main site. That turned out to be a problem on my end - Azure was doing some pretty aggressive caching of the feed file, which I think I’ve resolved. So I’ve been sticking with Micro.blog for the moment.

When it works, posts from my main blog, micro blog, and hobby blog are cross-posted to Mastodon and Bluesky using the Micro.blog rules for how they are presented.

I’m using my bookmarks feed as a way of trying out EchoFeed by Robb. It cross-posts those bookmarks to Mastodon and Bluesky. I will probably move my main feed over as well. Given how flexible EchoFeed is, I’m trying to think of other interesting ways I could make use of it. Perhaps even use it to “echo” something from a third-party site into my own?

Social Media

Lately I’ve been feeling the siren pull of social media less keenly. Maybe it’s because I’ve been really freaking busy at work, or maybe because I’ve generally been feeling pretty zen recently (for the most part). Whereas at the start of the year I was doomscrolling a lot, for the last few weeks it’s been something to fill a “micro break” once or twice a day. I’m not going to lie: it’s been feeling really good.

With that said, I have 2 main public accounts I use - Mastodon and Bluesky. I also have a semi-public^[2] Instagram account I use infrequently for miniature painting content that has landed there following the decline of Twitter.

Mastodon

Mastodon is far-and-away my main social media “presence” these days. It’s where I usually post the stuff that doesn’t fit in a blog, and where I spend the most time scrolling through things and interacting. I wouldn’t say I have things setup exactly how I want them - I don’t necessarily find Mastodon all that user-friendly still, particularly away from the 3rd-party iOS apps. My feed could definitely do with some tuning (i.e. follow more and better accounts), and for some things I’ve found it preferable to follow hashtags instead of accounts. If I could sum it up: “getting there, but needs more work”.

Bluesky

My Bluesky account is one I don’t use as much these days; I’m mostly just cross-posting links there and maybe scan my timeline 2-3 times a week, liking and/or reposting anything that catches my eye. The reason I stick with it is because that’s where a bunch of Twitter exiles I enjoyed ended up.

Anything Else?

Chat/Instant Messaging

I don’t. How dare you suggest such a thing.

Discovery

Oh my word how I miss Nuzzle. I’m still searching for a replacement. Perhaps one that works with Mastodon? Please let me know if you know of something.

In lieu of an aggregator telling me what people are talking about that I might be interested in, I have to do it manually (ugh). Where’s the algorithm when you actually want it?^[3]

Basically I try to keep a mental note of anything that’s coming up repeatedly (or just grabs my attention) in my feed reader or social feeds, and check it out when I can. It’s far from an ideal process and I’m probably missing out on loads. I follow Kottke and Waxy specifically for all the neat little gems they surface on their sites. They have their own folder in Inoreader and everything. I’d love to add more sites to this folder, so if you know of any that deal mostly with resharing the weird and wonderful of the web, please share!

I really wish there were other, convenient, ways to find all the neat stuff on the web. Again, if you have any suggestions here then please get in touch.

Other Apps

This blog post about my default apps should have you covered. At least until I update it for 2024.

Wrapping Up

I asked at the start “how are you doing the internet in 2024?” - so now I want to know! It’s currently WeblogPoMo (Weblog Posting Month), and this would make an ideal post. Just don’t take as long to write it as I did, or you’ll miss the boat 😅

If you do write a post, you can now let me know by sending a webmention to the The Underground’s home page - simply link to the site (not the feed) and it should pop up for me to see. Or you can email me at the address below/tag me on social media. Please don’t feel you need to follow the same structure as I’ve done here; this is only the way I was able to edit and wrangle things down into a manageable word count. Do your own thing.

My plan is to collate as many of your posts as I can into the next update here, so we can see all the different ways people are using the internet of late.

As always, if you do have any feedback or ideas for future topics, you can reach out on Mastodon, or email feedback@theunderground.blog.

Here’s a list of my upcoming and recent speaking gigs. I just put together this list. My first ever gig was in February 2004 which is frankly ludicrous.

I want to pull on a thread about dreams, and AI hallucinations, and - well - public policy I guess?

There’s the story of the black replica MA-1 flight jacket made by Japanese fashion brand Buzz Rickson’s. It featured in Pattern Recognition (2003) by William Gibson.

It didn’t exist, the jacket. It hadn’t been made. So then Buzz Rickson’s produced it, in response to people contacting them about it. "An object from the other side of the bridge," Gibson said. As previously discussed.

The structure of DNA came in a dream.

The structure of benzene came in a dream.

In 1943 the M9 Gun Director was a breakthrough in anti-aircraft artillery, compensating for target motion, wind, rotating of the Earth and so on. It inaugurated real-time computing, and human-machine symbiosis, and inspired Norbert Wiener to conceive of cybernetics, that trading space of ideas that led to the modern computer and - for better and worse - today’s technology landscape.

The M9 was invented by engineer David Bigelow Parkinson. It came to him in a dream.

Then there’s Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article As We May Think, also previously discussed, published in The Atlantic. The central character of the essay was a non-existence device called the Memex: a design fiction! It became real in the form of the PC and Wikipedia too. Objects from the other side of the bridge.

So dreams and fiction have power.

Another kind of dream.

That breakthrough AI image generator by Google back in 2015… remember those squirrels made out of puppy faces? It blew our minds back then, me included. The software was called Deep Dream.

We use the word “hallucination” a lot when we talk about AI today but usually in a pejorative way.

True, hallucinations have downsides: ChatGPT is making up fake Guardian articles (2023).

Yet I built an iPhone app that points to the centre of the galaxy using that very same ChatGPT, hallucinations and all. Here’s how I built it.

Here’s some of the press for Galactic Compass.

Some mornings I wake up to emails from people in a really tough spot in their lives (I’ll quote anonymously):

It soothes me to check your compass several times a day and rest assured that the galaxy keeps spinning, it will after my father passes, it will after I pass, and if life is such a heap of nothingness, it’s up for us to decide what to do with our remaining time and to pick our direction as best as we can, irrespective of what any compass may point to.

From hallucinations!

I get dumb ideas in my head a whole bunch.

I couldn’t build this one on my own. I tried for a couple years and couldn’t quite persuade anyone to help me. They were into it, sure, but - rightly! - it wasn’t anyone’s priority but mine.

You know, just as fish are swum by slipping between flowing vortices, I can slip-hop-skip off the hallucinations of AI. And I brought this app back from the other side of the bridge.

We may damn AI because of hallucinations but it’s accelerating us into a world that seems directly out of fiction:

• Project CETI (previously) is attempting to use AI to understand the language of whales.
• Figure AI is one of several startups making general purpose humanoid robots – planning and instruction following have been intractable problems for home robotics, and AI solved these problems at a stroke. Robots will happen fast.
• Prophetic AI is this year releasing a headband using ultrasonics to "to induce and stabilize lucid dreams."

Back to dreaming!

That last one closes an interesting loop. Scientists already figured out two-way communication with individuals in lucid dreams: Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep (The Cell, 2021).

Look:

AI is a general purpose accelerant. Accelerating the weird, amazing future. I’m enjoying it. But capitalism too.

(The idea that our current era is “late capitalism” is an optimistic one, I always say. What if we’re only halfway through?)

If the lucid dreaming headband works as promised, which I doubt to be honest but let’s go with it, we may use it to live out fantasies in a wetware metaverse, sure, but I would be unsurprised if where I end up is "running Microsoft Excel Hypnogogic Edition on my colonised unconscious, grinding out a second job between midnight and 4am."

That’s my point.

William Gibson’s black replica MA-1 flight jacket compelled people to make it real.

The compelling dreams around AI are… well, I’d like us all to work harder around that.

For instance.

“AI is taking our jobs.”

Why that fear, in particular?

If there had been some promising technology that might “take our jobs” in the era that The Jetsons was broadcast, we’d probably have seen it as leading us to a life of leisure.

So why don’t we hear that from our politicians?

Why doesn’t the leader of the Labour party stand up and say:

Let’s have a three day weekend. The two day weekend has been generally available only since 1878. It was the dividend of the Industrial Revolution. That was 150 years ago. We won’t be able to reduce the working week by a whole day over the next electoral period, it’s not a 4 year project. It’s a 30 year project. It’ll be our North Star for a generation. But we’ll get there. Let’s make the dividend of technology increased leisure for all of us, instead of racing to achieve the world’s first trillionaire.

Yes I’ve suggested this before.

A failure of our collective dreams.

Instead the “compensation” for the loss of jobs is to pay people off: Universal Basic Income.

But being given simply the ability to consume is an impoverished life.

From Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich:

People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others.

We are within touching distance of this vision!

Look at my new-found ability to build an app, the Galactic Compass I mentioned earlier: it’s the amazing gift of AI, that the gains are disproportionately felt by people with skills in the bottom half of the bell curve (source). I am now proudly midwit everything! A joy.

So rather than Universal Basic Income we should pursue Universal Basic Agency.

It’s AI so-called hallucinations that will get us there.

Framing can be powerful.

A dream can be a hyperstition.

Hyperstitions "bring about their own reality" – that’s Nick Land.

More:

A hyperstition is the opposite of a superstition. A superstition is a “false belief” but a hyperstition is an idea that operates in culture to bring about its own reality.

This is a term I’ve come to prefer to “design fiction” because it foregrounds the goal of autonomous persuasion.

It is wild to me that the clearest visualisation of a world in which high technology is used to live in accordance with the Earth, and to relish in family life, a solarpunk vision, is a TV commercial called Dear Alice (YouTube) by animation house The Line and yoghurt manufacturer Chobani. (To note: Chobani are pretty progressive in their own right.)

Like, more of that please??

But for policy makers.

So I feel that this is something special that artists and designers do.

Whether we call it design fiction or pathfinding or the manifestation of design and belief, there’s this power - in small ways, sketching an app and enticing the product managers, or in major ways, shifting policy - to dream dreams in such a way that we are all compelled to bring those objects back from the other side of the bridge.

That is my challenge and my hope, and I’m speaking here to a room of new design students at colleges all over the world, showing your work today, this is my challenge and my hope for you.

Today’s song is “Girl!” by Terror Pigeon.

We finally stopped to rest once we could touch the clouds. Stretched out around us in every direction, reaching into the atmosphere, an endless range of jagged peaks, mottled white, covered in pine tree peach fuzz. Dark splotches of diffused sunlight blanketed the crags, filled the valleys. Surrounded by the consequences of millions of years of tectonic friction, we basked in our accomplishment. The Earth was at once endlessly vast and impossibly small. We were thousands of miles from everything we knew. We were home.

I can still feel the cool air as it slowed my racing heart. I can still smell the scent of grass and trees and dirt and flowers dancing around us. I can still feel the smooth rocks in my hands as I grounded myself.

By the time we reached Hamilton Lake, my legs hurt, my lungs hurt, my back hurt. We climbed higher than the tallest building in the world! We hiked harder than all of civil engineering. There were so many times where I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. My body screamed. How did I do it?

We pushed. We climbed. We persevered. We persevered. We persevered.

And then we sat. We gazed around, dumbstruck. Our awe impossible to contain. We laughed.

I will never forget your smile that day.

I will never forget your smile. My favorite thing in the world.

Please allow me
To speak this clearly:
There is not will nor force or power on this earth
To keep you from me

Betraying every philosophical and spiritual belief I possess, the connection we share feels as though it was inevitable. The Universe merely bided its time while we grew into who we needed to become. Nudged us together when we needed to grow further. With such power guiding us, what else do we do but overcome the insurmountable?

And where I'm going
Will you come too then?
Cause all I want to do and see
Would be infinitely better with you beside me!

Of all the anthems we share, "Girl!" feels the most accurate encapsulation of us. Righteous, electric, optimistic. A propulsive, frenetic, emphatic ode to finding your person. The inexplicable bond that forms when you meet someone who gets you. The commitment you make over and over and over as you work to be better for each other. The adoration for the one you love. Who they are. How they help you see you more clearly.

And you know what I know
and you feel what I feel

One of my favorite memories: the first time I heard "Girl!" and I knew I had to share it with you. The way we shook our hips, our butts, as the song built and built and built. Until it exploded! And we were just a chaotic mess of limbs flailing around the apartment. Not dancing, per sé. Conduits of energy.

I love how this song compels you to shout the lyrics. To stomp with the beat. To fill any space big or small with as much joy for its entire runtime, and then do it all over again because it never feels like one time is enough.

I want to be there when you wake
I want to be there when you need
I want to be there when you laugh
I want to be there when you speed
I want to be there when you're hurt
I want to be there 'til you're fine
I want to be there for tonight
I want to be there all the time

One of my favorite memories: when we held each other and said "I love you" for the first time, changing everything forever.

There is nothing about you I won't love

One of my favorite memories: both of us sobbing at Kitbull.

There is nothing about you I won't love

One of my favorite memories: showing up so, so early in the morning to be one of the first of three couples married in Cook County in 2020, only to be fourth in line.

There is nothing about you I won't love

One of my favorite memories: how your compassion came through in the height of the pandemic when you had to sit with me and tell me how my anxiety and depression was affecting you. How I wouldn't have gotten the help I needed if it wasn't for you.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your laugh.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your voice.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your wit.

There is nothing about you I won't love

How you make me laugh.

There is nothing about you I won't love

The silly faces you make.

There is nothing about you I won't love

The way you solve problems.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your endless pursuit of self-improvement.

There is nothing about you I won't love

Your relentless optimism about people.

There is nothing about you I won't love

The way you see me like no one else has.

There is nothing about you I won't love

The way you make me feel safe.

There is nothing about you I won't love

How I am so excited to see where we're going.

There is nothing about you I won't love

How frequently we turn to one another and exclaim, "Oh my god, we're married!" Or "Oh my god, we have a house!" Or "Oh my god, we have a dog!" That for every bit that feels inevitable, feels equal parts improbable. I love rediscovering how exciting it is that we are here together.

There is nothing about you I won't love

I love how "Girl!" so effectively uses repetition to reinforce the joy and invigoration and awe and adoration and admiration and optimism of feeling seen and understood. It's a raucous, riotous celebration of finding the ones that accept you for who you are. An ode to the people in our lives that help shape us, who make life worth living, who help you see which mountains are worth climbing, and motivate you to persevere.

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