Ed Parry

I need to get back to writing. Capturing ideas. Sharing something. Not for any particular reason or for an audience but just to start the habit. Last day of Blogtober feels as appropriate as any.

Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their waking hours making “content.”

This is an exciting post from Ev Williams as he launches a new social network app, Mozi.

No social media, just networking. Seeing who is where and fostering that connection. It’s well worth reading the post and checking out the app. It’s a great concept and something in general I think many people are longing for.

There’s far too much content consumption for all of us. Every time I leave the house my first thought is “what shall I listen to whilst walking/driving”. I immediately search for something to fill the silence. But all that does is reduce the time I have to think. Explore ideas. Form better ideas. Refine ideas.

This has been a driving force of my writing here. Just get something down on the page without worrying too much. We can improve as we go. It just gives me a space to think. After all, that’s really what writing is.

Who thought it would be a good idea to put “erase” right next to “eject”? There’s a genuine moment of panic every time I go to unplug the drive that it’ll somehow wipe the drive.

I know there are further confirmation steps before it actually would, but still.

Writing regularly is hard.

It’s not for a lack of ideas but spending so much time online you start to think, “isn’t there enough content already?”

I hate that word. Content. The internet has this ability to take the most incredible work from the worlds most impressive artists, authors, designers, journalists and distill it down and categorise it to its most basic form. Just. More. Content.

I came across Henrik Karlsson and his blog, Escaping Flatland yesterday. It is beautifully written and it’s clear the amount of work put into his pieces.

He has this concept of a waste book. A second, more private, blog that is much more a stream of consciousness than an edited and refined collection.

That’s what this is. My waste book. I’m mostly just thinking out loud here, figuring out what is important to me. The fact that it is shared online and is public is nothing more than a sense of accountability. It’s not just a notebook page I’ll never look at again, it’s out there, somewhere, with my name against it.

I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.

The author of that statement will, come January, be US Vice President. That will put him into a conveniently self-described blameless position, but one in which as an individual he has great scope to actually, genuinely, make things better.

A few years ago, when Hillbilly Elegy was released it seemed to me that JD Vance had an understanding of the problems faced by many - but far from all - Americans. More recent rhetoric through this campaign has severely dampened my optimism, but perhaps now that campaigning is finished his focus will shift from soundbites to attempting to solve the hard problems.

We need this presidency to be surrounded by sensible voices. Is there one here?

Apple’s AirPods Pro hearing health features are as good as they sound

Since I discussed these features a few days ago, this felt a timely update. This is great to see. Also, The Verge URL had no tracking or campaign nonsense as part of it. Beautiful.