The Cost of Living in Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet Empire »

Articles talking about how Facebook destroyed the personal, friendly, welcoming internet are fairly common now, but this one by Brian Philips is actually worth your time.

Before I started writing, I did a Google search for “Facebook” and “annus horribilis,” which showed that dozens if not hundreds of media outlets — The Guardian, the BBC, El Mundo, Die Welt, The Atlantic, the Silicon Valley Business Journal — used this phrase, Latin for “horrible year,” to describe Facebook’s 2018. But 2018 wasn’t an annus horribilis for Facebook. It was an annus horribilis for us, the people who actually faced the surveillance and dishonesty and abuse. It was an annus horribilis for us because of Facebook.

To get on my soap box a little bit here, if none of these stories – the Cambridge Analytica story, the whole Russia thing, this most recent one about giving media companies back-room access to personal private data – if none of these stories make you want to delete your Facebook account, then what will? Where is the line for you?

To go a little further: if you haven’t deleted your Facebook account by now, then you are complicit in all of this shit.

People from all over the world are sending emails to Melbourne’s trees »

Melbourne gave 70,000 trees email addresses so people could report on their condition. But instead people are writing love letters, existential queries and sometimes just bad puns.

This is just lovely. My favourite line is “Hope it all goes well with the photosynthesis”.

Peter Sagal - The Case Against Running With Headphones »

I have a friend who wears headphones on long solo runs because, he says, “I can’t spend that much time alone in my head.” I disagree. He can, and he should. Spending that much time inside one’s head, along with the voices and the bats hanging from the various dendrites and neurons, is one of the best things about running, or at least one of the most therapeutic. Your brain is like a duvet cover: Every once in a while, it needs to be aired out.

As someone who can’t do basic household chores like washing dishes or folding laundry without a pair of headphones, this cut me deep.

The Graphic Art of Incredibles 2 »

The best part of The Incredibles 2 wasn’t the story but the amazing world they built. This is a great, tiny peek into the design process behind creating that world.

The Google Pixel 3 Is A Very Good Phone. But Maybe Phones Have Gone Too Far. »

My neck hurts. I am never not looking down. When I am not looking at my phone, I become slightly anxious. And then, when I do actually look at it, I become even more so. It reminds me of how I once felt about cigarettes. I experience the world with a meticulously crafted, tiny computer slab between me and it. I am an asshole. But so, maybe, are you?

Instead of the usual gushing over the new shiny, I wish more people wrote phone reviews like this.

Apple Watch Series 4 Fall Detection Tested By a Hollywood Stunt Double »

The new Apple Watch OS has improved “exercise detection”. Except when I’m sitting on the couch, rocking the baby to sleep, it will buzz and say “It looks like you’re doing an elliptical workout, track it?”. At least the fall detection looks like it actually works.

▶︎ Net Split or, the Fathomless Heartbreak of Online Itself | MC Frontalot »

I have a really low tolerance for nerdcore, but this is actually pretty good. And it speaks volumes that even MC Frontalot is sorta renouncing nerd culture. From “Internet Sucks”:

I don't love you any more internet You used to be a safe home for my nerd hard and my intellect Now you got so much hate but you just gotta interject Now you got too many chefs up in your kitchenette

Apple buys animated film from Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon »

Delighted for Cartoon Saloon. They’re quietly pumping out some of the loveliest animations I’ve seen in a long time – like Ghibli at their finest. If you don’t believe me, check out Puffin Rock on Netflix, which is a genuinely great children’s cartoon that’s full of charm and wit and visual inventiveness and it tells stories about friendship and intelligence that have none of the normal moralising one traditionally associates with children’s tv.

Just Read the Book Already »

Laura Miller reviews Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home, a book about rediscovering the power to actually read – I mean deep read – in the digital world of 2018.

There’s a lot of things that stood out to me in this review, but I’ll highlight this one because it’s so obvious and also so right

One of the reasons that digital readers skim is not because of some quality inherent in screens, as Wolf seems to think, but because so much of what we find online is not worth our full attention.

Ordered.

Unfollowing Everybody »

Anil Dash recently took the step of unfollowing everyone he was following on Twitter. This line in particular stood out to me:

... when something terrible happens in the news, I don't see an endless, repetitive stream of dozens of people reacting to it in succession. It turns out, I don't mind knowing about current events, but it _hurts_ to see lots of people I care about going through anguish or pain when bad news happens. I want to optimize for being aware, but not emotionally overwhelmed.

That’s entirely it. I’ve got a private list of maybe 20 people I follow because they’re the ones that are the least outraged about The Thing That People Are Outraged About Today, and it’s recently become my main view for Twitter because I’m too exhausted (emotionally, spiritually) for the main timeline.

See also Matt Haughey’s recent announcement I’m done with Twitter.