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"My idea of being a luddite is more like someone who keeps advocating that technology should be in our service, and not vice-versa. Technology seems to be on a path of eroding people’s agency, whereas I want people to have more agency and to be less ‘personal data fodder’."
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From Colin Devroe on his goal for 2026:
I think the modern world has afforded us all more time than we know what to do with and we’re squandering it. I know this isn’t true for everyone, and certainly not true of people everywhere, but many of us live in a time of abundance and we’re not spending enough time being bored.
If my kid hates anything, it’s being bored or practicing something. I like to remind him that it takes practice to be bored. And being bored takes practice.
I love this idea of “append-only storage” as it applies to data we collect about ourselves and our thoughts. First brought to my attention by Zsolt Benke in these two posts.
There are multiple ways to develop ideas. Sometimes the best one is where you can’t change the history of an idea. It’s there as breadcrumbs to go back in time and see how an idea was developed.
Zsolt references this (now offline) blog post as an influence.
Visiting my aging father this holiday season, he asked if I could pull up some old home videos on my phone. I did, and we watched an hour’s worth of ancient birthday parties. Upon seeing his parents in one video, he said:
I know every family is different. But there’s never a day I don’t think about both of them. <long pause> And sometimes wish I could just…talk to them…and tell them things I never got the chance to.
It was tough saying goodnight knowing this will probably be the last year my son believes in magic. But for tonight, this year, he does. And that’s enough.
I’m not technologically opposed to crypto, LLMs, or passkeys. But the level of zealotry I see from their respective proponents and communities is similar and equally off-putting. Big-time ick vibes.
It was not yet entirely obvious that 50 or even 100+ capable humans would never be able to keep up with the cambrian explosion of content that was the public internet in those days.
I’m extremely late linking to this, but I adore this remembrance of the early days of Yahoo! from one of my favorite coworkers.
And, if you don’t mind, here’s what I wrote about taking a job at Yahoo! (checks notes) eighteen years ago.
For anyone wondering, the edge of an iPhone Air is stronger than a Studio Display.
Maybe it's because my eyes are getting old or maybe it's because the contrast between windows on macOS keeps getting worse. Either way, I built a tiny Mac app last night that draws a border around the active window. I named it "Alan".
Brilliant. Just brilliant.