[HN Gopher] Curated list of personal blogs
___________________________________________________________________
Curated list of personal blogs
Author : valdect
Score : 285 points
Date : 2021-07-27 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (refined.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (refined.blog)
| cyberge99 wrote:
| What is the general etiquette here at hn for submitting a
| personal blog post?
|
| Assuming the content is relatively novel or fresh and possibly
| niche (tech related) for example.
|
| I hate spam, so I hesitate to submit anything here. Perhaps it's
| the fear of critique that induces hesitation (for me personally).
|
| Is there a general rule of thumb or guideline?
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Personal blog posts land here all the time. I wouldn't hesitate
| to submit your posts! So long as it's not naked self-promotion,
| if the content is good it'll get voted up and gain visibility.
| hansvm wrote:
| There are a few previous discussions floating around [0,1]. A
| good rule of thumb is to submit your stuff only if you think
| people here would find it interesting (the same as any other
| submission). It'll be a normal article submission, not a Show
| HN or something (as per the rules in that section). If you have
| enough of a following you might just wait for them to submit
| your blog posts -- serving as a bit of a natural filter for
| what other people think is a good fit for HN.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5245369
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3949023
| sethammons wrote:
| I was thinking of a solution for discoverability for distributed
| blogs. Maybe a webring/tag/label footer that you can simply
| include that will dynamically show related blog posts from
| others.
| fsflover wrote:
| See also, search engine for finding personal/non-corporate
| websites: https://wiby.me.
| aendruk wrote:
| It looks a bit more niche than that; they prominently warn that
| they will not index sites that "use much css".
| blakesterz wrote:
| It would be good to have an OPML file available as you're
| building this list as well.
| sirodoht wrote:
| I'm also maintaining a curated list of blogs at
| https://collection.mataroa.blog/
|
| One can also limit the list with the ?key= queryparam, like so:
| https://collection.mataroa.blog/?key=philosophy
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Awesome, I agree, personal blogs are great.
|
| I can't help but notice all the blogs tagged "software" in the
| list (so far). In fact, I think if there was a filter to exclude
| software blogs, there might be only a few remaining?
|
| I missed out on the whole RSS thing when it was popular. My sense
| was that it solved the problem of knowing when, among a whole
| bunch of blogs, a site had new content.
|
| Perhaps it exists, I want an app/site that will scrape a list of
| sites I give it (blogs for example) to show me any new content
| each day. A personal home page with titles and perhaps a hundred
| or so words from each site I track that has new content.
|
| In the broader picture, I feel overwhelmed by the amount of
| technology these days, spend too much of my time browsing, etc.
| (HN, case in point). So I am looking for something I call _TRAoT_
| , _The Right Amount of Technology_.
|
| Maybe it's a "magic mirror" that displays this overview, home
| page. Interactivity is minimal or nil. No ability to comment,
| follow links, etc. Like the morning newspaper of old, I spend a
| little time in the morning with it and then go about my day
| "offline".
|
| In short I am looking at ways to take the open-ended and stress
| inducing (anxiety inducing?) relationships I have with technology
| and replace them with a more staid, maybe even serendipitous,
| relationship that allows me back more free time, less stress.
|
| Maybe this "Solar Punk" thing is something of the Zeitgeist of
| our time.
| blakesterz wrote:
| I think what you want is a "Planet" set up?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software) or maybe
| something like River5? https://github.com/scripting/river5
| gen220 wrote:
| RSS is still popular[ly-supported]. It's not too late.
|
| I felt exactly the way you did for a long time. Eventually, I
| decided to invest in setting up a more healthy and symmetric
| relationship with information, like you describe.
|
| I realized RSS was the right tool for this goal. I'd definitely
| recommend trying this, even if you don't have the gall to self-
| host. It feels like I get three square meals a day, instead of
| injecting corn syrup every 15 minutes for 16 hours.
|
| I chose to self-host my reader + data store, so that all of the
| data can live on my machine, and so I'm not dependent on some
| VC, advertising, or goodwill-backed project that will kick the
| can in a few years. There are plenty of good options. I decided
| to try out miniflux [1] as a first pass because I liked it's
| dependency graph, and haven't felt the need to try anything
| else.
|
| Most blogging platforms (blogger, squarespace, wordpress,
| substack) produce RSS feeds by default. News aggregators like
| HN and Reddit have robust APIs for generating RSS feeds.
|
| There are products like you describe, that convert a web page
| into an RSS feed with various hacks. IMO, this creates too big
| of a dependency on a flaky third-party. It might (literally!)
| be easier to build+maintain it yourself for the few sites that
| don't have an RSS feed, with `curl` `echo` and `sed`.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/miniflux/v2
| cubano wrote:
| Sounds pretty close to RSS to me...what do you see as the
| difference between what you envision and existing RSS?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I honestly don't understand, haven't learned RSS.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Honestly, it's not that complicated. The site publishes a
| feed, and you can use any RSS reader to consume that feed.
| Some readers are out in the cloud, others are self-hosted
| as services, yet others are client-side applications.
|
| In general, most blogs and major news sources, along with
| aggregators like Reddit and Hacker News, publish RSS feeds.
| It's basically _the_ way I consume content on the web.
|
| If you want to give it a try I'd recommend Feedly.
| gego wrote:
| RSS is the best! I use tinytinyrss to have my news in a way I
| want them, as we all should ;)
| yetanother-1 wrote:
| Inoreader is the closest to the Google Reader and the free
| account is really useful.
|
| I like the app as well and it can scrap websites that don't
| even provide RSS feeds, given that they are scrabbable of
| course.
| 1000mH wrote:
| I had similar wants as you and settled on the web extension
| fraidyc.at
|
| I'm satisfied so far.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| RSS still works fine for me. I use Feedly, but there are
| others.
| Rerarom wrote:
| Seconded, I use Feedly daily
| DHPersonal wrote:
| If you're on Apple products, go get NetNewsWire in the App
| Store and use your iCloud space to sync subscriptions between
| devices. You'll have to manually add RSS feeds, but those are
| usually discoverable by doing a web search for your site + feed
| or rss, or by adding /feed or /rss to the end of the site URL
| to see if it's hiding there.
| sneak wrote:
| Most websites that have RSS have a meta tag that identifies
| the RSS feed, you can just put the normal URL to the
| site/blog into your RSS reader and it will pick up the RSS
| feed URL from the meta tag.
| SamBam wrote:
| > I can't help but notice all the blogs tagged "software" in
| the list (so far). In fact, I think if there was a filter to
| exclude software blogs, there might be only a few remaining?
|
| Sort the table by Tags.
|
| There are 9 non-software blogs out of ~250 blogs. So, yes,
| about 96% software.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| In the Ancient Times there were a couple of different
| approaches to something similar to what you are asking for.
|
| On the one side, for many years that was what people considered
| their "home page": you'd use a "Portal" like Yahoo! or MSN.com
| and they'd support all sorts of customization, including blocks
| for RSS feeds you'd give it. It's hard to imagine today's
| super-curated and overly news-obsessed Yahoo! or MSN.com being
| truly customizable and allowing you to pick and choose RSS
| feeds over media conglomerate content, but Yahoo! has fallen
| quite far from its peak and MSN.com and others were always
| flirting with the media conglomerates over user interests.
|
| The other thing that existed in the Ancient Times that even
| fewer remember today was that HP believed RSS feeds actually
| could herald the "personal morning newspaper era" and that it
| would be great for printer and ink sales so they had an RSS
| reader for years that you'd give it a list of RSS feeds and a
| print schedule and it would happily have your "morning
| newspaper" printed and waiting for you.
|
| It was an interesting idea, though I still don't think the
| waste of paper/ink on that was necessarily the best idea for
| the planet, but there was some romance to the concept of a
| "personalized morning newspaper".
|
| Most e-readers have an RSS app or three, some with strong
| offline support. You might be able to get what you want from
| the right app.
|
| I've also seen some interesting DIY projects (mostly here on
| HN) of people taking big e-ink displays and building ambient
| personal news surfaces. Nothing productized yet, but very cool
| to see people DIY exploring the "magic mirror" spaces for non-
| interactive "here's a glance at stuff you care about" displays.
| kixiQu wrote:
| I mean, it's building in "Hacker News Points" as a first-level
| primitive, so idk if they mind that software's the focus.
| fovc wrote:
| What you want is RSS, but you don't need to learn how it works
| at all. Go to feedly.com and create a (free) account. Add sites
| you want to follow (there's an 'add content' button which lets
| you search by URL). Done. Feedly will give you a home page with
| titles and blurbs, and for many sites you can even get the
| 'reader mode' content without navigating to the site directly.
|
| [Not affiliated with feedly, just a happy user]
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| I think it's similar to Feedly but I'm a fan of feedbin.com
|
| And for an iOS/Mac client I _highly_ recommend "Reeder". [0]
|
| Have used both for years now.
|
| [0] https://reederapp.com
| kstrauser wrote:
| After a period of inactivity, NetNewsWire
| (https://netnewswire.com) is back as FOSS, and it's
| awesome.
| lamontcg wrote:
| https://www.newsblur.com representin'
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Looks v interesting but could do with a mobile friendly
| website!
| [deleted]
| rchaud wrote:
| Nice effort. However the HN-based ranking system make this lean
| heavily towards 'software' tagged blogs.
|
| Having a filter for specific tags (e.g. 'add/remove this tag')
| would help the blog discovery process.
| ogwh wrote:
| It would be handy to be able to exclude tags from the search
| results.
| huydotnet wrote:
| I got the same problem, that I want to collect all the blog posts
| of friends in my circle, so I built a curated blog engine for my
| developer communiy [1], it works by collecting blog posts from
| RSS feeds of the members and display them in one place like a
| normal blog [2]. You can use this as your personal RSS reader
| too!
|
| [1] https://github.com/webuild-community/federated-blog [2]
| https://read.webuild.community
| exaltation wrote:
| If you feel overwhelmed by all the blog posts out there, there
| are newsletters that will send you one or several articles a day
| and let you ingest them slowly. I particularly like Thinking
| About Things and Findka Essays.
|
| [0] https://www.thinking-about-things.com/ [1]
| https://essays.findka.com/
| sodimel wrote:
| By any chance, could we add a "language" tag, so that blogs that
| are not in English can be added?
| flakiness wrote:
| I'm empathetic with that sentiment (I mainly write in
| Japanese), but the HN-based scoring wouldn't work with the HN-
| based scoring. I'd rather have a separate list for each
| language, based on some other scoring say, # of tweets.
| sodimel wrote:
| I'm not convinced of the interest of the hackernews score (it
| links too much blogs to tech), and I don't find that sharing
| articles on twitter is really relevant (people don't click on
| links on twitter, the information is held on the platform).
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Is there a good way to search (e.g. like a Google search) only
| personal blogs and homepages? I was looking into this the other
| day, but couldn't figure out a solution.
| coldpie wrote:
| Best I've come up with is adding like "wordpress" (in quotes,
| to force it) and other blogging software with common footers
| into the query. Not a great solution, but sometimes turns up
| interesting stuff.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| it would be nice if substack had rss too
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| For folks interested in this space, there's a few other resources
| of which I'm a fan.
|
| First, there's Micro.blog (https://micro.blog/). They can host a
| blog for you, or you can publish to their service for free using
| your own blog by pointing Micro.blog at your RSS feed (I do the
| latter). Think blogging but with a social element, facilitating
| both interaction and content discovery.
|
| Second, there's the IndieWeb movement more broadly
| (https://indieweb.org/), which advocates for a whole ecosystem of
| distributed, open technologies for enriching the blogging
| ecosystem and encouraging interoperability.
|
| Third, believe it or not, webrings live on! The indiewebring
| (https://indieweb.org/indiewebring), for example, is a fun way to
| find additional bloggers out there.
|
| As you can tell, I'm a fan of blogging and the IndieWeb
| movement... :)
| lambic wrote:
| Indieweb uses Slack? That's... confusing.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| They use a bridge between IRC, Matrix, and Slack.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| "Indieweb uses Slack" in the sense that, yes, there is an
| Indieweb Slack team. There are probably also people who
| contribute to the Indieweb who use Twitter and Facebook and
| other fully proprietary systems, as well as many who use
| Micro.blog, which is built using established open standards
| but does not make its server open source.
|
| Don't be the guy who strokes his chin and says "You say
| you're a vegan, yet you have a leather wallet. Interesting."
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Is there varied content on micro.blog? The concept is nice
| (simple social network using RSS) but I've been looking at the
| "discover" page a few times and the content really doesn't seem
| interesting, although the vibe is polite and calm.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| So, couple things about the Discover page.
|
| First, it's categorized. The platform uses emoji instead of
| hashtags and the Discover page has a set of defaults, so
| clicking on the dropdown at the top of the page will give you
| some other options. You could also try a keyword search to
| find posts related to topics you're interested in, and then
| see if you want to follow those people.
|
| That being said, the second thing to know about the Discover
| page is that it's hand curated, and I'll be the first to
| admit that there's a pretty clear bias in the kinds of posts
| that bubble up. :) For example, I follow @adamcomputer
| (https://micro.blog/adamcomputer), because, as you can
| probably guess, I'm very much a nerd. But I don't know that
| I've ever seen any of his stuff land in the Discover feed. So
| instead, I sometimes find interesting people and look at who
| they're following and go from there.
|
| Now, I still very much enjoy browsing the Discovery feeds!
| But I'll be the first to admit discoverability is, at least
| in my opinion, still a challenge on the service.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I support the effort, but I have seen these things generally
| devolve, fairly rapidly, once people figure out how to game the
| system.
|
| For myself, I've done a ton of writing[0], but my work seems to
| be too long-form for most. I don't really go out of my way to
| promote it. I basically have them up, so I can reference them in
| the odd comment.
|
| Not the end of the world. I generally write for my own benefit;
| not for others.
|
| [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/
| polote wrote:
| If you don't promote it, how do you want people to discover it
| ? Long post do well on HN comparatively with other boards.
|
| [1] is exactly the kind of post that I include in my
| newsletter, but if it is not posted on HN, I can't see it
|
| (there is a typo in the link you posted)
|
| [1] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-
| travel...
| city41 wrote:
| I've completely given up on promoting my stuff. It used to be
| very easy and straightforward. Like minded folks could find
| new stuff without a problem. Nowadays, there's just way too
| much content, the vast majority of very low effort, and you
| get lost in the noise immediately.
|
| For example, I have an old blog post that got featured in
| podcasts, on dailyjs, HN, is linked to from MDN, etc. When I
| wrote it in 2014 I pretty much just submitted it to Reddit,
| that's it. Nowadays I couldn't recreate that exposure -- or
| even a tiny fraction of it -- if my life depended on it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I really don't mind if people find my stuff (thanks for the
| heads-up and the comment. It's fixed).
|
| It's just that it is so crazy, with ego and money to be made.
| I really have neither interest, so I don't have the energy or
| the inclination to do much to promote.
|
| I spend most of my time actively writing software, and my
| postings are occasional "breaks," where I spend a couple of
| days, writing about something. It gives me a chance to
| "regroup," and, sometimes, explaining stuff helps me to
| understand it, myself, better.
|
| I agree that longform blogs are important and good, but it
| has been my experience that very few people are actually
| interested in them.
|
| For example, I will sometimes write a comment (you may have
| noticed that my comments tend to be long), and a reply is
| made, highlighting one sentence; usually context-free, and
| adding some kind of "slap."
|
| Often the "slap" is someone saying that I am not talking
| about the _very thing that most of the comment was about_.
| They didn 't even bother to read the whole _comment_. What
| makes me think they would read one of my long-ass screeds?
|
| These Romans are crazy.
|
| https://memegenerator.net/img/images/13250908.jpg
| polote wrote:
| If you prefer something daily, you could check
| https://hnblogs.substack.com/
| jacobobryant wrote:
| This really is a fantastic resource (thanks!). I've found
| several great posts from it, including this one[1] which made a
| huge impact on me.
|
| [1] https://rootsofprogress.org/a-career-path-for-invention
| rckrd wrote:
| I just wanted to say that today I hit the 2 month mark for
| consecutive days of writing. I published 60 posts, one every day.
| I wrote about startups, engineering, and other thoughts.
|
| I've found that doing something daily is the best way for me to
| build habits. It's been a fantastic experience. My writing became
| more concise. It's given me clarity.
|
| And great idea for the site- I submitted a pull request for my
| blog [0].
|
| [0] https://matt-rickard.com/
| bussiere wrote:
| Let's also bring back webring ...
| Ajay-p wrote:
| I am afraid to blog. I could write about my career and my hobby,
| but those do not seem to be interesting for others. My opinion
| may be interesting, but it is risky because something I write may
| come back to offend others one day, or get me in trouble. One
| time ago I considered blogging anonymously about the economy but
| doing so anonymously felt disingenuous.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| There is no opinion which is safe from others taking offense.
| You might as well blog.
| 100011_100001 wrote:
| This is similar to the "managers don't want to talk to female
| employees".
|
| The solution is simple. Treat all people as people. If you
| can't, don't talk about them.
|
| Edit: Perhaps projecting my opinions I assumed you were talking
| about political correctness. However re-reading your post I am
| not so sure that's what you meant.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| He's concerned that his views may become controversial in
| future. Someone with published centre-right views in Cambodia
| in 1965 would have felt fairly safe. Fifteen years later they
| would have been dead.
|
| (Ah! I notice you've edited it. It's worth pointing out that
| 'Political Correctness' was originally a term to describe the
| 'correct' behaviour of people in totalitarian states.)
| 100011_100001 wrote:
| I respond to posts the same way I write code.
|
| I write it first, then look for edge cases.
|
| Perhaps I should add a new step, post after the edge cases
| have been considered.
| yesenadam wrote:
| > Perhaps I should add a new step, post after the edge
| cases have been considered
|
| Or use the "delay" feature on your HN profile page: e.g.
| mine is set to 2, meaning after I post a comment, I have
| 2 minutes to edit, reconsider, proofread or delete before
| anyone sees it.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| I guess we all have different edge cases to our
| worldviews!
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Treat all people as people."
|
| Which also means taking into account that some people are, in
| fact, unfair assholes and that you may fail to recognize them
| in time.
| habibur wrote:
| Every genius in all ages held some weird view all their
| lifetime, even by modern standards. But history forgets those,
| and remembers their contributions for the good.
| BeetleB wrote:
| History forgets most of the good ones too. We just remember
| some outliers.
|
| I think his concern is it affecting job prospects, etc. Being
| recognized after one dies is not appealing to him :-)
|
| (I often look at biographies, and being recognized only years
| after death is quite common).
| haswell wrote:
| Historically I think you're mostly correct.
|
| The question that I don't think we have an answer to (but we
| see some worrisome trends) is: does this hold up in an era
| where those odd beliefs aren't just a footnote somewhere but
| instead tightly bound to ones identity for the rest of
| eternity?
|
| Basically, how does social media and "cancel culture" change
| things, or does it?
| karaterobot wrote:
| I've had a blog for about 6 years, with over 300 entries. I
| don't advertise it, and try to disallow indexing by search
| engines. It's "anonymous" in the sense that my name isn't on it
| anywhere, and it doesn't contain personal details. There's no
| commenting, no integration with social media. It's just for
| friends, and if they want to talk to me about anything I write
| there, they know how to reach me.
|
| I felt the same pressure as you, but so far it's been very
| rewarding: turns out I don't have to get famous to enjoy
| blogging, which was something I wanted to test when I started
| it. So far so good.
| shireboy wrote:
| I came to say similar. I ran a personal blog for a while and
| toy with the idea of revamping it occasionally. But my
| objections generally fall into two categories: * For tech-heavy
| programming/operations how-to or bugfix content, Stack Overflow
| killed those for me. As a consumer would rather find the
| bubbled-up "right" answer than wade through Google hits for
| forums/blogs that may or may not be right. As a writer, I no
| longer felt my personal blog was the best place for such
| content. * For opinions on current events, industry, etc. I
| don't feel I have something new or important to say.
|
| I feel old and curmudgeonly now. Thanks.
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| You can say anything you want, but only in the guise of
| anonymity (private). You can choose to reveal yourself, but
| then you cannot say anything substantially radical (public).
|
| The more important thing that is happening isn't all the fuss
| about "cancel culture" or "free speech", it's that society is
| pushing towards the absolute division of the grey area between
| the public and the private, which is the area where politics
| actually take place. The real danger is that speech itself, in
| one mode entirely full of consequences and in another mode
| devoid of any, will become meaningless because of this
| distinction. What you say will no longer be related to what you
| actually do anymore, and speech will just be a floating
| signifier that no longer has any basis in reality and will lose
| the ability to change the world. The "freedom of speech" isn't
| the thing at stake, it's the value of speech itself that's
| being jeopardized.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Interesting, I came to post the same thing.
|
| It's a shame, semi-permanent communication now represents an
| attack surface for randos hoping for their free-floating rage
| to find a surface upon which it might condense. In a sense,
| this provides little benefit to you except as an outlet and
| perhaps as a way to exercise writing skills, learning about a
| blogging platform, perhaps SEO (or not!), and so forth, but now
| the possible benefits are outweighed by the potential
| negatives.
|
| The future looks like a lot of people performing the "grey
| rock" method. It's a pity, but that's the system as it punishes
| and rewards today.
| coldpie wrote:
| They make a lot of headlines, but you really have to say
| something extremely boneheaded for anyone to care about your
| opinions enough to do something about it. Stick to topics
| you're knowledgeable about (this is how you avoid saying
| boneheaded things), and generally stay positive and
| constructive, and you won't have any trouble. The fear you're
| feeling is wildly out of whack with reality.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Or you can be some random Mexican guy fired for making an
| OK sign with your hand, _by accident_.
|
| Because that is now the white power sign. That's reality
| now.
| coldpie wrote:
| That doesn't seem very relevant to the topic of creating
| a personal blog.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| In the sense that I was discussing, you know, just
| existing and expressing yourself at a bare minimum, and
| suddenly having strangers swoop in to get you cancelled,
| it's relevant enough to me.
|
| My point is very simple, and it goes for blogs, Twitter,
| Facebook, or bumper stickers on your truck: there's a lot
| of people out there who looking for the _barest thing_ to
| fixate upon to get you in trouble, right down to a simple
| knuckle-crack.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah what I'm saying is that doesn't really happen in the
| real world, unless you go invite controversy by
| discussing controversial topics, especially if you aren't
| an expert on those topics. And even then it's honestly
| pretty rare and there's even whole industries dedicated
| to supporting people who are purposefully provocative.
|
| I'll be blunt: I think it's very unlikely that your
| opinions on <insert current controversial topic> are
| going to revolutionize the status of the debate on that
| topic. The world has nothing to gain by you writing about
| that topic, and as you say, there's a chance you have
| something to lose. So just don't write about that. My
| advice if you want to maintain a blog is to write about
| something you care about and know about.
|
| You can view my personal blog if you like, it's in my
| profile. I write about woodworking and video games and
| gardening. No one has tried to destroy my life for my
| experiences with growing grapevines. Sure, if I went off
| on a rant about <insert controversial topic> or wrote a
| bunch of hyper-negative invective about <insert group of
| people>, yeah that might come back to bite me. So I
| don't.
|
| No one's going to come after you for a personal blog
| about playing guitar or whatever. Stay positive. Stay
| constructive. Stick to what you know. Don't invite
| controversy. You'll be fine, and maybe you'll even create
| something that touches someone else in a positive way.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Except a guy cracking his knuckles got fired, _in the
| real world_ , so when you say that it doesn't happen, I
| know that is wrong. We both know it is wrong. I shall now
| post the link so you can stop saying "that doesn't
| happen."
|
| https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-
| ove...
|
| There. It happened. In the real world. So cracking your
| knuckles is there under "inviting controversy."
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah like I said, I'm having a hard time drawing an
| analogy from that to maintaining a personal blog about a
| hobby you like or whatever.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Okay, I'll break the analogy down for you, since you are
| having a hard time:
|
| Part one: You, me, the writer (any human being)
|
| Part two: Existing in a public space (to be found via
| Google or or noticed in Twitter or making stuff on Etsy
| or showing things on Instagram or just being photographed
| in person)
|
| Part three: Self-expression of any form (writing
| something that will be found "colonial," or a _blog_ , or
| making a hand gesture, cracking one's knuckles, or
| standing there with an uncomfortable smile, or even
| knitting (https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-
| knitting-fell-into-a...) in that public space
|
| Part four: Negative consequence for that self-expression
| ("cancelled," getting fired, the usual death threats,
| "screaming, hats first into the wood chipper") from ...
| people who have never even met you, who found that self-
| expression in the public space.
|
| Cardinal Richelieu: "If one would give me six lines
| written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find
| something in them to have him hanged."
|
| It's the revolutionary spirit of the times. These
| incidents occur. You may not be aware of them, but others
| are aware of them, and they have what is known as a
| chilling effect.
| coldpie wrote:
| Haha, if websites like that that are where you're getting
| your news from, I can see why you're terrified all the
| time! I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I'll
| choose to take the risk and keep blogging about grapes :)
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I'm sorry, are you suggesting that these things didn't
| happen? Because that is the only translation I have of
| "getting your news from."
|
| Is the idea that the NBC San Diego branch just ... made
| this up? That the BBC
| (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d70h) fabricated
| this wholesale? Let's just click through some of those
| hyperlinks in the Unherd thing.
| https://fringeassociation.com/2019/01/07/2019-my-year-of-
| col... sure seems to have happened; take care to note
| "I've offended many people with this post, and for that I
| am deeply sorry. Please read my comment here. And 01.12
| Please read my follow-up about what's wrong with this
| post here."
|
| These are all things that have occurred in "reality" and
| the "real world," to use your diction. You can now ignore
| them -- feel free! -- but pretending that they didn't
| happen is, I don't know, a performance only for yourself,
| because I cannot unsee what has been seen.
|
| I am not terrified; as above, I pointed out that the
| potential negatives outweigh the possible benefits at
| this point. It's a simple analysis. You have elected not
| to factor those real world events into your analysis.
| coldpie wrote:
| I'm not saying they don't happen, what I'm saying is if
| you immerse yourself in a constant stream of "here's a
| bad thing that happened to one person out of the dozens
| of millions of people who created content on the Internet
| today", you'll get a really distorted view of what's
| actually happening. It's like never leaving your house
| because you see shootings and murder reports every day on
| local news. You're missing out on a whole lot because of
| the distorted view that kind of information diet gives
| you.
| tendstofortytwo wrote:
| I think it's valuable to just blog for your own sake as well.
| It gets you into a habit of putting your thoughts into words,
| which in my experience helps my understanding of the topic.
|
| About offending people - think of it as an opportunity to
| learn. You put your opinions out there, and if someone points
| out a flaw in your thought process, you try to see where you
| went wrong. If you were wrong, you get to make another blog
| post explaining your new understanding, and thanking the person
| who helped you get there. If you weren't wrong... well, there
| are trolls on the internet everywhere, you just learn to ignore
| them.
| lolinder wrote:
| > If you weren't wrong... well, there are trolls on the
| internet everywhere, you just learn to ignore them.
|
| Until you end up being the target of an internet mob bent on
| harassing you and everyone associated with you until someone
| breaks.
|
| This is probably a lot rarer than headlines make it seem, but
| I share OP's anxiety about blogging about _anything_ even
| tangentially related to politics.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Why do you want to blog? If you're just doing it because you
| want to connect with people with shared interests, do whatever
| you want and see how it goes. Doing it for exposure or to get
| jobs is an entirely different story.
| solarengineer wrote:
| You could consider adding the sentence to your blog post: "I
| have written the above based on my present understanding,
| experience and maturity. As these improve over time, hopefully
| my opinions would improve too!"
| vorpalhex wrote:
| It would be harmful to add such a disclaimer. It would not
| assuage those who would take offense and it would hurt reader
| trust.
|
| All writing is from a present understanding.
| kixiQu wrote:
| If all writing is from a present understanding, how could
| it hurt reader trust to acknowledge that explicitly?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I would expect the following kind of writers to use that
| that disclaimer:
|
| * The writer expresses poorly considered opinions,
| loosely holds them. They won't bother defending them.
|
| * The writer expresses anodyne opinions that might one
| day become controversial, they won't bother holding onto
| them when the rest of society moves on from them.
|
| In both cases, I wouldn't bother reading what they had to
| say. I could open the opinion section of any newspaper to
| get the same content with twice the conviction.
|
| Nothing wrong with hedging your opinions in-text. But if
| you're hedging everything you say before you've even
| bothered to say it, you either have nothing interesting
| to say or probably censor yourself enough already.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Interesting. It sounds like we value very different kinds
| of writing.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| That sounds like something from a struggle session, just
| written preemptively.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| considering people pick tweets from 10 years ago out-of-
| context (and out of the thread they are part of), I don't see
| much benefit
| MisterTea wrote:
| As someone who would like to blog but doesn't, because I don't
| put in the effort:
|
| > I am afraid to blog.
|
| Don't be.
|
| > I could write about my career and my hobby, but those do not
| seem to be interesting for others.
|
| Says who? Let others be the judge.
|
| > My opinion may be interesting, but it is risky because
| something I write may come back to offend others one day, or
| get me in trouble.
|
| This one is tricky but its easy: be careful with humor as that
| tends to be a source of social faux pas. Steer clear from
| politics. Stay on topic.
|
| example: I was reading a blog about Linux desktop critique
| which devolved into a stupid rant about RMS and woke politics.
| Hard fail on the authors part.
|
| > One time ago I considered blogging anonymously about the
| economy but doing so anonymously felt disingenuous.
|
| Many people throughout history have wrote many things under
| anonymous pen names. It's fine.
| ghaff wrote:
| Anonymity isn't a _guarantee_. But with reasonable op sec
| e.g. don 't use your nick elsewhere, don't tell people about
| your blog, don't promote under your name, you're pretty safe
| so long as you mostly stay away from politically
| controversial issues. (Which may be why some people want to
| blog of course, but I have no interest.) Frankly, you're
| pretty safe so long as you stay away from polarizing topics
| and kicking hornet nests in any case but anonymity does add
| another layer of protection. Of course, you don't get
| professional benefit either if that's a concern.
| ghaff wrote:
| Absolutely nothing wrong with anonymous/pseudonymous
| blogs/Twitter/etc.
|
| When your blog _is_ part of your in real life public presence,
| you obviously don 't want to do that. And I started blogging
| before many of today's concerns became as big a deal. But, if I
| were starting a blog today that was divorced from my
| professional identity, I'd seriously consider not connecting it
| to real life me--especially if I regularly blogged about
| political issues (which I don't).
|
| There's a long history of people writing under pseudonyms. If
| someone _really_ cares they might be able to connect the dots
| (and many times so if they 're a government) but that's not the
| attack scenario for most people.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| Which is a dark side of "cancel culture". When people (or
| media entities) decide to connect the dots then reveal the
| identity to whatever twitter mob is relevant.
|
| Hopefully this doesn't become a bigger trend. As you said,
| the government can connect the dots if they need/want to.
| There's no need to vigilantes to do it on their behalf.
| [deleted]
| elefanten wrote:
| I sympathize with all you say, I've been through all that
| myself. But why would blogging anonymously be disingenuous?
| Plenty of writers have opted for anonymity. If the ideas spur
| thought or discussion, they're still valuable.
| [deleted]
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Anonymity is not disingenuous. If you want to be super
| scrupulous about this, choose a pseudonym that is clearly not a
| real name.
| aparks517 wrote:
| Your hobby (whatever it may be) is interesting to at least one
| person: you! I bet you find other folks on the Internet who are
| interested too. If it's not a common topic, they'll likely
| appreciate your blog all the more because of that.
| valdect wrote:
| Hi, nowadays blogging is becoming less and less popular and
| people use twitter as their personal blog. This site is created
| to provide curated list of fine blogs, provided with their
| tags,feed links and hackernews page. The site is hosted on github
| and you can contribute to it if you want.
| lbriner wrote:
| Unfortunately my code examples are not leet enough to fit in a
| Tweet.
|
| I dislike medium but I also worry that if too many people are
| reinventing their blog platform, aren't we risking low quality
| non-scrapable content?
|
| Is there a blogging platform that you just have to fill in the
| blanks and get RSS, accessible content with perhaps a very
| basic gui and code editor for posts?
| input_sh wrote:
| Ghost[0]. Seriously, from a user perspective, it doesn't get
| any simpler than that. You fill a few variables in settings,
| you write, that's it.
|
| I've toyed around with WordPress, Jekyll, Hugo, etc etc and
| spent more time making shit work as I want it to than I did
| actually writing things. Ghost is amazing and I won't look
| for anything else for a long time.
|
| [0] https://ghost.org/
| ghaff wrote:
| Google's Blogger still works pretty well for me although I
| don't use it a lot these days. (Most of my professional
| writing is published on platforms with editors and I sort of
| got out of writing random more personal musings--yes,
| probably in part because Twitter.)
|
| I even fired up a hosted Wordpress site a few years ago but
| then never did much with it so I shut it down.
| abledon wrote:
| you should not sort alphabetically, people wil strategically
| name their blogs to appear at the top... Make some sort of
| random sort the default
| kixiQu wrote:
| Is the idea that it should focus on software only?
| [deleted]
| lazyjones wrote:
| Twitter is becoming less relevant for personal stuff, it's
| mostly politics now. For personal things, people use Tiktok and
| youtube now.
| criddell wrote:
| > it's mostly politics now
|
| That depends on who you follow. It's in your hands.
| azemetre wrote:
| Do you have examples of people using tiktok for programming
| or software related topics? Generally curious what the
| content is like.
|
| Software talk on instagram is pretty surface level and very
| picture oriented (look at my desk
| setup/terminal/editor/whatever).
| [deleted]
| patchorang wrote:
| I love this. I'm in the ultrarunning community and I LOVE reading
| everyone's blog posts/trip reports/race reports/adventures. But
| everyone stopped updating them over the past 5 years or so. Now
| that sort of thing is just an Instagram photo with a paragraph or
| two. The depth and character of those old blog posts have been
| lost. I wish in depth blog posts would come back, but in reality,
| I don't think they are.
|
| Side note: My other favorite types of websites are very specific
| human-curated lists... which also seem to have died out.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| Blogs are great and I encourage everyone to start one. Mine has
| never been popular but I enjoy occasionally writing a quick
| article on something I found difficult or even just venting into
| the void.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| My favorite blog type is along the lines of "old man yells at
| clouds". Preferably with said cloud often being "The Cloud". Is
| there a category for that, or perhaps a Curmudgeons Web Ring?
| threatofrain wrote:
| Does anyone have a recommendation for blogging platform with
| Latex + code highlighting support?
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