Choose Your Own Internet

8 minutes

One of the advantages of spending less on social media is deciding where you do want to spend your time on the Internet. It’s such a vast and amazing place that once you remember how big it is – it seems like a such a waste to spend it glued to a social media platform.

The front page of my internet is Feedly. I have 1000’s of RSS feeds of interesting sites pumping out interesting thoughts writing and links everyday. A collection of personal internet, thats been evolving since before the death of Google Reader. It really is the most important part of my web experience. If you don’t have a feed reader, just get one and start.

Someone, I can’t remember or find who 🙁 recently linked to this wiki called supermemo.guru from a post about how their sleep patterns had changed during / under lockdown.

Turns out supermemo.guru is an enormous personal wiki complied by one man, a one Dr Piotr Wozniak from Poland. It has 1000’s of pages on Learning, Creativity, Intelligence, Sleep, Education, Memory, and way way more. I’ve put a screenshot of the index page on sleep down the right hand side of this page. I should say its at 10% zoom and even then I couldn’t fit it all in. The page must be 20k words of content? or more?

The wiki is incredible. I have lost hours and hours of time in it already and I’ve barely scratched the surface. It is clearly one persons life work / research. It feels like something really special. A wonderfully deep digital garden.

I’ve also spent a lot of time on wiki.c2.com. Complied by a community that has been around since 1995. As far as I can tell, the digital garden was abandoned sometime in 2014. It has some real ‘old web’ vibes to it. If you have read Joanna’s Lurking then C2 is a fine example of the web we’ve lost. It’s a bit difficult to navigate. You just have to web surf the connections and see where you end up.

I highly recommend checking the following pages: Culture Shock, Dramatic Identity, GaveUpOnTelevision to get an idea of what you are in for if you dive in. I also really like the collectively written pages, with observations and anecdotes from people contributing to the body of knowledge. Its fascinating and really cool.

This multi author wiki approach is also one of the conventions I enjoy when reading 1d4chan.org. The repository of knowledge from 4chan’s traditional games channel. I read it for the Warhammer obviously. But it’s also another site to get lost in. This page on ‘Your Dudes’ is the single most important page fans of the novels and lore should read before approaching the hobby. I think about it a lot.

All of the above is… I guess… why I’ve started Come Internet With Me. To encourage and promote the web over social media. Sharing the experience with others and enjoying what the world wide web has to offer.

I really like all the weirdness you find in sites I’ve linked to. Real communities making content for them selves without an extractive intermediary.

I’d also join a forum over Discord any day. Discord is too fast and too immediate, it’s a synchronous chat platform that does not suit my preferred engagement with the web. Unless you are there 24/7 then a good convo that happened that you would like to contribute to is missed and its difficult to pick it up/join in. On a forum, topics can be revived at any time. Conversations spanning years can evolve in context alongside what came before. Very accessible. Very nice.


Whilst I don’t belive in gated content, I do enjoy cozy communities.

If I was going to build a community here on the Jaymo.net then I would start a forum for paying supporters. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot since the convo I had with Jay Owens about marketing and communities on Twitter during the week.

The offer would be something like: For the minimum ask of ÂŁ3 a month or ÂŁ30 a year, you can support my work and get access to a forum … where you could only talk about the things that I’m interested in. I would also rule it with an iron fist. It would certainly increase the value proposition. Something that I’m aware I’m lacking at the moment

LMK what you think about the idea, privately or in the comments?


COME INTERNET WITH ME – XENOGOTHIC Searches ‘Tornadoes’

Writer, photographer and blogger Matt Colquhoun AKA Xenogothic joins me for an hour of quality internet.

Matt followed this episode up with a blog post of his own. Click though to the blog post for the link.

Permanently Moved

Sleeping Lions

The tip of the tail flicks unbeknownst to the cat. Its inner world betraying the stillness of its body. Just like our minds.

Update From The Island

The gang was hanging out, just running around? the other morning. It was a bit weird but go off I guess.

Comrade Claude here with some essential anti-work politics.

Some real shade from Chevre the other night.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

  • Pushed 3 separate documents forward this week by about 500 words each. All of them had been in the ‘Deadzone’. The purgatory my ideas get into after a huge initial push that runs out of steam, and as a result I run out of interest. I’ve found that unless I finish something end to end in that initial period of manic typing, it will fall off into a ‘Deadzone’. And if I don’t add bullet points to the end of the document with where I think it should go next, it’s unlikely to get finished before. But I’m happy that these things have crept forward on of them is unstuck.
    • TBH is should just rename my Gdocs folder the ‘Deadzone’
    • It has helped me a lot to recognise and name this process as now I can do something about it.
  • Had lots of cool and interesting calls with cool and interesting folks. More next week. Some potentially exciting opportunities upcoming.
  • Crawled out of deadline vortex for some work I promised pro-bono a while back. Which of course, sods law means it was a hell project.
  • Had a call with the guild.is crew. Cool to see what everyones up to.

Dipping the Stacks

Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato Share Their UFO Sighting Stories – Popdust

Revolution and American Indians: “Marxism is as Alien to My Culture as Capitalism”

The next economic crisis: Empty retail space

‘March Backwards Into the Future’ — Marshall McLuhan’s Century | WIRED

Gaming Through New Eyes – Award Winning Documentary – Blind Gaming (Extended Cut) – YouTube

Jeffrey Toobin Zoom Dick: Let the Pundit Class Finally Feel a Little Shame

May I suggest: Feeling guilty is worthless if that’s where you stop | mjpaxton.com

Ameno hatsune miku: The cursed TikTok song and its lyrics explained

Reading

I’ve finished KSR’s Ministry for the Future. It’s FANTASTIC. I think it needs a full review. I’d like to get hold of the Hardback before I write it as it will be difficult to do flicking around though the audiobook version.

I also listened to Flesh and Steel by Guy Haley over several walks in the autumn sunshine this week. It’s part of the new Warhammer Crime series. A multi author/shared world all set in the single location – the Hive City of Varangantua. It’s really good. I *think* it might be Haleys first foray in to first person writing. He pulls it off really well. Even if the tropes in the story are typical cyberpunk/hardboiled crime.

Music

I’ve been listening to two new albums this week:
The first, making an appearance on the blog for the first time since 2018

Junglepussy – JP4

Main Attraction is the first single off the new album that came out yesterday – the first since JP3 in 2018. The track the straight radio tune from this new album and showcases JPs vocal styles really well.. There are some other stand out tracks like Out My Window and my favourite, the very wonky Telepathy.

The other album I’ve been listening to is:

Sweet Crude – Officiel//Artificiel

The album came out earlier this year at some time during lockdown but I’ve only just discovered it.

This track Sun Sept is a good place to start. It has the same sort of indie rock/pop qualities that attracted me to the band Stars in the Naughties.

The album is full of synths, violin, brass and percussion. Its vibrant and as a 6 piece I can imagine them absolutely killing in on a medium size stage a festival. Check out the newest single and first with a proper video Ultimatum. The track plays with percussive urgency in interesting ways, really like it.

Lastly to hammer how good they are home. Sweet Crude have been doing regular stripped back lockdown livestreams with one or two members of the band at a time. And they really hilight the quality of the song writing.

Sweet Crude should be massive IMO. Head over to their channel and check em out.

Remember Kids

Support

If you regularly enjoy my writing or shows please consider supporting my work.


Leave a Comment 💬

Click to Expand

2 responses to “Choose Your Own Internet”

  1. Ilja avatar

    Hi Jay,

    I used to be an avid RSS reader, but I always abandoned my feeds eventually because I got overwhelmed with the sheer volume of the incoming stream of posts. I just could not accept any unread badges, which is impossible to attain if you don’t clear your feed several times a day, even with just a few dozen feeds.

    So I’m wondering do you have any advice how to approach feeds more meaningfully? How do you make sure you stay sane? How do you choose what to read and what to skip? Do you hide the unread badges and use a feed curated by Feedly?

    I know it’s a lot of question. Any advice in this matter is much appreciated.

    Greeting from Prague,

    1. Jay avatar

      Hi! thanks for the comment. Great questions. I replied in full in todays weeknotes!
      https://www.thejaymo.net/2020/10/31/170-panning-the-streams/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *