Om Malik has started a daily blog section. He is using WordLand to write there. Here is the announcement post for more details.
Unlike him, my posts are interspersed with the other blog posts. You can identify posts written in WordLand by using the Status Updates category.
I have slowed down the rate at which I am consuming content this week. I have also reduced the sources from which I am consuming my content to feeds I have subscribed to.
I fell into a spirituality rabbit hole with questions about Narasimha, kula devatas, and various practices performed in Kerala in the past. I fell into another rabbit hole about blogrolls and libraries.
I also wrote the first in what I hope to be a weekly post on LinkedIn about technical writing.
All this writing means I have not got any reading done other than my RSS feeds and a few Substack posts. I have not been able to follow space news since almost the beginning of February now.
The recoverey after surgery seems to be going alright.
Om Malik writes on his blog, On my Om:
When I went to see the Manila Pen Show’s website, every single one of the exhibitors was linked not to their website but to Instagram. These included some of the more traditional and sedate pen-makers from Japan. Earlier this morning, when reading Die Workwear’s piece about shirts, I realized that almost all the bespoke shirt makers, shoemakers, and others announce their trunk shows and new products on Instagram. And so do others who have something to say, sell, or shill.
That is when it hit me — Instagram has gone from being “a photography community” to being a “visual information network.”
Doc Searls says we must return to calling the web, the Web.
Same goes for The Internet. And The Net. The Web is the Web, not “the web”. We—the writers of the networked world—gave something up when we allowed the bishops of the AP and the Chicago Manual of Style to demote the Web from proper noun to lower-case status, down there with television and radio. Nobody invented “the television,” or “the radio.” Not even “the newspaper.” But somebody—Sir Tim Berners-Lee—invented the World Wide Web. With upper case letters. The WWW was not the www. Is it too late to bring the Web back as a proper noun? I don’t know. I do know that I’m never going to demote it in my own writing.
"And it’s sometimes surprising to me how insightful my younger self could be, which I think is explained largely by the fact that most of my writing is written at peak states of clarity, while most of my life is lived in the moderately muddled middle. I’m a generally wiser 34-year-old than my 25-year-old self was, but when my 25yo self was having a peak experience, he was typically wiser in that moment than I am on average day today. And the great thing about writing, journalling and so on is that we get to integrate our peak state wisdom into our ordinary lives."
– for future reference, visakanv's frame studies, Visakan Veerasamy
And at any given time, you’re either pre–heavy thing or post–heavy thing. You’ve either made something weighty already, or you haven’t. Pre–heavy thing people are still searching, iterating, refining their direction. Post–heavy thing people have crossed a threshold. They’ve made something substantial, and it shows. They move with more confidence and calm.
No one wants to stay in light mode forever. Sooner or later, everyone gravitates toward heavy mode—toward making something with weight.
– Make Something Heavy, Working Theorys by Anu Atluru
I think the whole post is worth reading in full.
I learnt of this while reading Manuel Moreale's Peoples and Blogs conversation with Ben Werdmuller:
At some point, I’ll need to change my domain name. Werd.io is part of the .io top-level domain, which is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory. Quite rightly, and far too late, the British are ceding that territory back to Mauritius. At that point, there will be no British Indian Ocean Territory, and by ICANN’s rules .io will stop being supported.
I returned to work this week, working from home, after the surgery. I am slowly catching up at work. My consumption of OTT content has gone up, in terms of hours but I have started reading The Times of India, RSS feed, and newsletters on the mobile in addition to the books.
I tried to write a few Status Update posts here using Wordland that Dave Winer made. This was bought to my notice by Doc Searls.
I agree when he says in a later post that it feels like tweeting. I have been off social media for the past one week. I think writing with Wordland makes up for the writing I lose because I am not on social media.
I was happy to watch Toll Free Traveller again.
This was a different podcast with Shephali Bhatt compared to the one she did with Amit Varma.
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> Peculiar things always get our attention, calling to mind the adage that scientific discovery revolves around the person who notices something no one else has and says “That’s odd.” The thought is usually ascribed to Asimov, but there is evidently no solid attribution. Whoever said it in whatever context, “that’s odd” is a better term than “Eureka!” to describe a new insight into nature. So often we learn not all at once but by nudges and hunches.
Nice paragraph from Paul Glister in Centauri Dreams.
Doc Searls wrote about blogging like it's 1999 on WordLand. I went to WordLand.social to give it a try.
Parallel Spirals 