The more I see How to Succeed On [Platform] articles, the more I want to leave (flee) their confines and build my own home. Quartz or Blot, I'm thinking.
This week - The plain text format is the best for preserving the words you want to remember, but not everyone is ready for it and that's okay. Keep your enthusiasm for open formats running hot and you could one day change a life.
I join you in calling for respectful actions and conversations. And in not taking one group's perceived disrespect toward another's as open season to mock them.
I'm not angry over it, but I do think it presented a confusing and disrespectful message. If one is about inclusivity, why create a presentation that insults the deeply held beliefs of many?
There's a lot to be said for treating others as they /should have/ treated you, rather than giving back tit for tat. The Last Supper mockery makes as much sense to me as a parent whacking their kid, while saying "That'll teach you to hit your brother!"
The idea of personal websites we control has a strong appeal, but it just struck me:
All those itty bitty scattered sites are like gorgeous little shops tucked away in winding alleys that are easy to miss. You have to know where they are before you can visit.
Platforms (Medium, Substack) are like malls; you have one place to go, and it's easy to wander around and see something new.
I love it when companies reward you for sharing their software, when it's something you love.
Someone just tried out Workflowy with my referral link, and now I get 100 more nodes a month on the free plan! Yay! It cost neither of us anything, and is a win-win all round.
Thanks, Raindrop.io for the thoughtful, respectful #AI implementation.
“You get your own private AI categorization model based on your data, which is never used for training. We use an open-source model on our servers, ensuring your data never leaves. No public APIs are used (such as OpenAI, ChatGPT, Google, etc).
@liztai Best language learning advice: find yourself a speaking partner. A native Mandarin speaker who wants to improve their English/Hokkien. Speak with them for an hour each week over Zoom, half an hour in each language.
I’ve been doing this for more than a year to improve my French, and am delighted with my progress!
@liztai What you need then is a fan in a country that can get Prime to do a synchronised live stream over Zoom! Pop it on the big screen in a floating window, and glance at it when you need the subtitles. I’m only half kidding here.
Macs are awesome, Setapp is awesome, AI sucks—sometimes. Other times AI is awesome too, like MurmurType for language learning.
@joannaholman, thanks for the quote about AI and meal replacement shakes! I added it at the last minute, just before this piece was due to be published.
My posts here are set to auto delete, because when I was a newbie someone said it's a good idea for privacy etc.
I just thought, though, when I die these unrehearsed words and messy thoughts will all disappear and no one will know if I was ever really here. And I kind of want to be remembered, if I'm to be honest!
There's another option : bookmark the posts you want to remain, and mark that option in the delete settings.
@liztai I get it. Seems to me that people who boycott Substack had also better not be buying clothing produced in a sweatshop, or diamonds/coffee/chocolate that isn't fair trade. The list goes on.
Fact is, it's *hard* if not impossible to find that kind of purity!
I also get that many people are doing what they can, and not letting the vastness of the problem stop them from doing *something*. The extreme virtue signalling isn't helping, I agree.
I'm one week in to using One Big Text File #OBTF. It's a different kind of simple to the one-file-per-idea system I've been using (and haven't yet given up).
Personal experiment: Can OBTF be a worthy companion to my paper Bullet Journal? So far that's a firm yes, but one week isn't long enough to know for sure.
Looking forward to observing any friction in what's meant to be a frictionless approach.
@mlevison Thanks! It's going well so far. I still have some work to do, but I imagine that the next newsletter will be the last one sent from Substack.
People using Buttondown for blogging: is there a search box I'm missing? How can I find a specific post amongst an archive of hundreds, to send to someone asking about the topic? @buttondown
(1 of 2) I like it seeing what people highlight in my #Medium stories (wish this could be a feature of independent blogs, too). It’s cool to be reminded of things I’d forgotten I’d written, that someone else has found worth remembering.
“Having an incomplete, imperfect system is something to be proud of. Buffeted by life, it will change shape over time until it fits you perfectly.”
This was from a piece I wrote about combining Johnny Decimal with PARA. Links below. @johnnydecimal
Australian designer, writer, and plain text advocate. Educational publisher for more than 30 years. I enjoy planning and note-making without using shiny gatekeeper apps. Using less paper, sustainably. My faith in Jesus Christ underpins all I do. Spell/say my name as in the word “miscellaneous”. Swearing and politics filtered out. #productivity #technology #pkm #obsidian #plainText #plainTextAccounting #writing #analog #français #𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 #christian #accessibility #barefootShoes #nvc