gru:Bz
Average millennial living life on the edge (of the Midwest)
A blank slate
How Digg helped invent the social internet
So many of Digg’s features, from its voting mechanism to its commenting system to its occasional teeming toxicity, are omnipresent on the internet now. But in 2004, when Kevin Rose was working on the first versions of his new news platform — back when he was best known as a host on the TechTV network — it was all brand new.
Awesome interview with Digg’s founder Kevin Rose. They recently rebooted Diggnation and he says he’d be open to buying the website back if he could get in touch with the current owner.
I spent a lot of time there back in the day 🫡 I doubt there would even be Reddit if it wasn’t for Digg paving the way.
One personal website is enough for me – disassociated.com
Not everyone wants to post content on social media though. In that case then, I can see the point of something like Micro.blog. I don’t know a whole lot about the platform, but it seems similar to the likes of Mastodon, Threads, or Bluesky: it’s basically for micro-blogging. But even with something like Micro.blog, you still come back to the problem of content ownership, and the concern such platforms, like the social media channels, could close-down just like that.
I battled with that idea at first but you can definitely export all of your data in a matter of seconds if you ever wanted to go somewhere else. And it’s based on Hugo so it’s possible to export everything and convert it to a self hosted Hugo setup if you wanted to.
It’s kinda like a hosting provider in itself, in a lot of ways. You get a website and a micro blog platform all in one.
What makes WP Engine different from Bluehost?
This might sound dumb but I don’t get the difference between something like WP Engine and other hosts that specialize in Wordpress, like Bluehost which literally refers to itself as a Wordpress Hosting Platform and Dreamhost, both of which are recommended by Automattic?
I get that they have “WP” in their name; that makes sense for being easily mistakable for an official part of Wordpress, but the revision history thing just doesn’t seem like it’s as big a deal as Mullenweg is making it out to be. I know he criticized them for not contributing enough to Wordpress.org development but isn’t that kind of arbitrary? Like what is enough?
I do think being owned by a private equity firm is a little greasy for a company that offers hosting for open source software but Bluehost is owned by one too.
Is it just a matter of how big they are? Is it just a personal thing between two rich guys? I feel like it’s probably that.
I’m pretty good at starting a post, going off on a tangent and then forgetting what I was even writing about in the first place
I was originally planning on making my root domain a static landing page/hub kinda thing but I changed it back to my Micro.blog site since I’m most active here. Instead of an about page, I added a link in my nav to the “hub” subdomain where my socials, bio and a longform blog live on omg.lol.
I really liked this video essay. The author draws parallels between simulation theory and our always connected, perpetually online world.
I still think about that time Jack Dorsey called everyone on Bluesky “Very, very common”
Bluesky saw this exodus of people from Twitter show up, and it was a very, very common crowd. … But little by little, they started asking Jay and the team for moderation tools, and to kick people off.
DOODAD.dev - a sick pattern generator for web design
Tools for making websites fast, accessible, expressive, and green. These tools are mostly for helping web developers build small websites (sites that use fewer bytes) without sacrificing expression.
I randomly stumbled across this a few minutes ago when I was trying to find a way to generate Memphis design patterns. You can choose from a ton of different SVG patterns, manipulate the size, shape, color and angle and generate an image from it. Love this kind of thing! Feels like a desktop app on a website.
What's valuable to you?
I was just reading this Reddit thread about a blogging platform that launched a few years ago. It's grown into a successful space with a thriving community by now, but the comments were kind of cracking me up.
The #1 thing people were focused on back then was how to monetize it.
There's no built-in advertising options and it's really not even set up to run something like Google ads. SEO, maximizing engagement and clicks are not baked in. It's simply a place where indie bloggers can go to share their stories and hang out with other bloggers.
WordPress.org’s latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
WordPress.org has taken over a popular WP Engine plugin in order “to remove commercial upsells and fix a security problem,” WordPress cofounder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced today.
Wow that must be pretty serious huh?
It’s not clear what security problem Mullenweg is referring to in the post.
Oh 🤨
Rumors on X Are Becoming the Right’s New Reality
A curious set of claims has recently emerged from…X: FEMA is systematically abandoning Trump-supporting Hurricane Helene victims; Democrats (and perhaps Jewish people) are manipulating the weather; Haitian immigrants are eating pet cats in Springfield, Ohio.
I remember when conspiracy theories used to be shit like subterranean lizard people and hollow moon theory. No one took it this seriously and it definitely wasn’t part of anyone’s political campaign. I think RFK’s brain worms must be contagious 🤪
SSRI Withdrawal, Brain Zaps [psychiatrist.com]
In SSRI Withdrawal, Brain Zaps Go from Overlooked Symptom to Center Stage
A sensation unofficially known as “brain zaps” has caused concern in patients stepping off of their SSRIs. Until recently, physicians have widely been unaware or dismissive of the symptom.
“There was an emphasis both within the [psychiatric] profession and pharmacological companies to make these medications sound not addictive,” [Alexander Papp] told Psychiatrist.com. Therefore, when SSRIs first became popular, very few systematic studies were conducted on antidepressant discontinuation effects.
I went through opiate addiction when I was in my 20s and that was nothing compared to how… off I felt when my doctor pulled me off of Cymbalta cold turkey a few years ago. She switched me to a completely different class of antidepressant and said I shouldn’t have any noticeable side effects or withdrawals.
I felt fucking insane after about two days. I was getting brain zaps every time I’d look in a different direction and I literally did not know who I was at times. I spent most of a week in bed and quit my job. The absolute worst thing I’ve ever been through. Needless to say I found a new doctor.
They really do downplay all of the negative side effects and withdrawal symptoms of antidepressants. Glad to see people are starting to take this stuff seriously. Finally.
Why even come out if you're bi or pan?
Due to…everything going on right now with WordPress, I thought I’d put together a list of alternative CMSs that better fit the criteria someone might have for their website … The criteria for this list are “Can it be downloaded, dropped onto a server, and you’ll have a website?”
Great post on WP alternatives! I’ve never liked it for a personal blog, it just feels too commercial for me. But I know it’s something a ton of people use. Like most bloggers and commercial websites. Worth checking out if you use WP and don’t like the direction it’s headed these days.
Gr'attitude
Get your reps in
About five years ago I made the transition from manual labor, like factory and warehouse stuff, to sales. I went from blue collar to diet white collar.
It wasn't because I was suddenly ambitious enough to make a major career change and get my shit together, really. I was almost pushed into it, in a way. Our manager was out sick for months due to a botched surgery so we had a total of two salespeople at this furniture store. It was commission only so there was already a pretty high turnover rate as it was.
A deposit of marine fossils found under San Pedro High School - Los Angeles Times
Researchers uncovered two distinct sites on campus where new buildings were under construction: a bone bed dating back 8.7 million years in the Miocene era and a shell bed about 120,000 years old from the Pleistocene era.
It’s crazy that at any given place in the world you could be standing on top of millions of years of undiscovered history and not even know it.
I like the brutalist feel of omg.lol 😌
Internet Archive hacked, data breach impacts 31 million users
“Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!,” reads a JavaScript alert shown on the compromised archive.org site.
Earlier today, the Internet Archive suffered a DDoS attack, which has now been claimed by the BlackMeta hacktivist group, who says they will be conducting additional attacks.
What a bunch of losers. It’s like throwing a molotov cocktail through a library’s window.