Over the last few weeks I have been resurrecting some old reading habits. I am trying to spend more time reading long form articles and books and far less time in “conversational spaces” (insert social media site of choice here).

I don’t miss the conversation.

Although for years I’ve practiced, “Don’t read the comments, ever,” I still continued to actively engage on Twitter and recreated a Facebook account a couple of years ago. I slowly removed sites from my RSS reader that I found cropping up other places. My New Yorker subscription and The Economist subscriptions were cancelled. I left many articles unread in Instapaper. Short articles and comments that I could actively boost and engage with that led to sharing my own thoughts that were boosted and engaged with was addicting and felt like the better way to “keep up”.

Who needs to keep up?

There are a lot of things that led to my changing habits, but perhaps the most important factor was realizing that I could slow down. When my own life ramped up in activity and complexity, I could go days without checking “feeds”. I never missed a thing that mattered. “Keeping up” really meant collecting scraps of thoughts and sharing scraps of thoughts like staring down this small section of bark on this fascinating tree at the entrance to a forest.

Now that I have stepped back to take a broader view, I am much happier. It turns out that I can far more effectively limit what I read to things I am actually interested in when sources are controlled by me. Social media is really good at following individuals, but any one individuals overlap with my interests is always imperfect. When I follow someone for their mechanical keyboard glamor photography, I am also inundated with their views on immigration. As a result, spending time reading on the internet meant allowing the internet to dictate my mood. Now I can go to a set of feeds or a new source or website that only posts pictures of puppies when I am in the mood to look at puppies, and Trump can keep being a massive piece of shit somewhere else.

I am creating a filter bubble, not for confirmation bias but for sanity’s sake, not to silence view points but to ensure I spend time learning from what I read, considering my views and those of others, and enjoying my hobbies.

I would much rather read a long article in The Weekly Standard than the screed of some distant connection on Facebook. I would rather learn about current events from The Washington Post, read considered views in Slate or The Atlantic, or engage in magazine-style, long form journalism of all types than catch up on Twitter.

Social media crowded out quality media and I allowed it to because it kept my racing brain constantly fed and offered me some sense of validation and connectivity when I jumped into the fray.

I don’t want to jump into the fray as much anymore, I get almost no satisfaction from it. And I’m tired of eating cheap take out every night when I can afford a healthy, complete, and expertly prepared meal.

A few years ago I started to use Goodreads and take its annual reading challenge seriously so that I pushed myself to read fiction novels, which always brought me joy. We also cancelled cable, not to watch less television and movies but to watch less unintentional television and movies. The problem wasn’t how much we consumed but how much of it was there because it was meaningless, thoughtless, background noise. Both of these changes have been a part of my good mental health. I don’t know why it took me so long to apply the same thinking to the rest of my media habits.

Media personalities are better follows on most social media platforms because they are generating content in a specific area for a living. I am not just following a person I trust, but that person is likely to spend 80-90% of their time writing about an interest I share.

Individual users on social media tend to post about 2-4 subjects in equal measure to cover that same 80-90% of their posts. The result is I have far less overlap between their posts and my interests.

Over time, social feeds become some combination of noisy and toxic when following people I like which dilutes the amount of my feed that is about interests I have.

This is similar, but distinct from so-called filter bubbles.

I remember forums fondly because although they were not 100% on topic, there was a community constructed around common interests. I knew what kind of stuff I’d read when I popped on a forum, and even off-topic posts tended to share baseline common knowledge and references built off those interests.

It’s in this spirit that I’ve started to explore Reddit seriously for the first time in a while. Twitter is not a happy place. Facebook is not a happy place. Instagram is nice, but I find discovery to be difficult. Reddit offers an opportunity to curate an interest-driven internet, focused on areas that don’t make me feel bad.

I still use an RSS reader. If there were more original blogs I could follow, it would build the same thing I’d like to see on Reddit. But blogging is not as popular as it once was. It’s discovery and social layer is broken. I’m hoping efforts like Micro.blog could turn that around over time.

Until then I’ll continue to try and find ways to read about things that make me think and make me smile and make me laugh. I want my experience with the internet to be a lot more like my experience with podcasts.

I sometimes have difficulty explaining to friends why micro.json.blog exists. Why post there and Twitter/Facebook? Saying that I want to “own my own content on my own domain” doesn’t resonate with most people in my social circle. There’s some sense to it, but I think the main reaction is “that seems like trouble/ruckus for small gains”.

I think a better answer to why I try and keep spaces that I fully own and control on the internet is found in @manton’s post today:

Facebook and YouTube are conflicted about how to handle this because their model is wrong.

Centralized platforms have succeeded on three stools:

1. Ease of use.
2. Discovery
3. Network effects

Unfortunately, creating a platform that succeeds at all three of these things also creates a platform that is an effective vector for hate speech, harassment, and coordinate misinformation campaigns. That’s not a possibility, it’s an empirical fact.

The current model has made it so that solving easy problems around speech require seemingly impossibly hard solutions. I want to take some of that back.

In some ways, the endless torrential rain this summer is the ideal way to break in a new home. What leaks will spring will have to have sprung at this point…

My Uncle has passed. Uncle Marty lived with my parents from before I was born. Growing up I was never home alone sick. I never didn’t have a ride where I needed to go. He never missed a Little League practice, no less games. He never missed a moment that mattered in my life.

When I was 6 years old, Uncle took me to Washington DC. He wanted to show me where he lived, to take me to the museums and historical sites. We saw just about everything in 3 days, even though I kept making him come back to the Air and Space Museum. I loved space, and he loved planes, and we loved each other.

I always thought one day I would take that trip again with him and my own child.

My sister and I are his only niece and nephew. Just as we are the only grandchildren of my grandmother Elaine, his mother, who passed just one month ago. I have been filled with more love than just about any person I know because of them. My grandmother struggled for 8 years with illness and decline before passing at 87. My uncle disappeared before our eyes in a month at 67.

I am hollow.

Luk Yu Tea House (陸羽茶室).

We went back into Hong Kong City from the Island side this morning to go for “Hong Kong French toast” which Elsa had been excited about. First stop was Australia Dairy Company. It was quite busy, everything moved fast, and the English menu was a bit of a dud. We ordered the breakfast set, which came with a delicious macaroni soup with ham. It was a very clean flavor that was somehow both simple and complex. The toast was delicious, as was my fried egg and milk tea. Unfortunately, we did not have French toast. It was absent from the English menus and everything moved too fast.

But not to worry! We headed around the corner to another dairy company afterwards. This one was run by all women instead of men, and there we found French toast and toast with peanut butter. It was delicious, although we actually preferred the savory breakfast in the end.

Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery 萬佛寺.

I walked around this morning to get Elsa some allergy medication— she appears to be allergic to Hong Kong. After that, the rain started as we ate dim sum in a tiny local shop we found on a blog. The food was just ok. The two best dishes were shaomai and Singapore noodles, and overall our feeling was we’ve had equally good versions of everything we ate in the US.

The rain caused us to seek the insides and leave Hong Kong Island for indoor shopping and walking on the Kowloon side. We ate some pan-fried xiaolongbao that were delicious (not pictured) I think I can officially say I prefer the pork and truffle to the “plain” pork. Also, definitely a snob for these little soup moursels, and possibly already deciding that Taiwanese food is >> Cantonese.

National Taiwan University (國立臺灣大學).

藍家割包: Guanaco! Gontran Cherrier.

Taipei 101, more walking around the city, a short hike, and total collapse. We missed the night markets because we were just too tired.

Xiangshan Hiking Trail (象山登山步道).

It was a tough 20 mins up the steps this afternoon. We had already walked about 5 miles before attempting the trek. The view was definitely worth it, but we were so knocked out when we got to the bottom we ate a delicious scallion pancakes, hopped on the MRT, and fell asleep at 7pm for the rest of the night.

I snapped a shot of the city from ZhongXiao Fuxing from the Brown line, an elevated MRT that we may just take through the city later just to watch Taipei go by.

Lee’s recommendation of shaved ice was spot on, as was Elsa’s insistence we eat bao.

Taipei 101 Food Court (台北101美食街).

Pictures from our first day Taipei, which involved napping, beef noodles, napping, walking through some residential neighborhoods, Chiang Kai-shek changing of the guards, napping, Shilin Night Market, and now sleep.

About 6 or 7 years ago, Elsa and I visited San Francisco. I think we were there for a conference, but all I remember is wandering the city and that it was the last time I saw our mutual friend Winnie, whom I miss.

Elsa was trying to solve my usual hangry when she pointed out a café across the street and suggested I pop in. She accidentally led me to wander into the attached bookstore, Borderlands Books.

I have long loved sci-fi/fantasy, and it has always made me feel cast out of the mainstream. I never felt different as a nine year old for loving Star Wars, but reading A Wrinkle in Time, The Golden Compass, and The Dark is Rising all before the release of the first Harry Potter book meant I was a true nerd. It didn’t matter that I played sports or that I wasn’t introverted or that I had no social anxiety to speak of. I read a lot, and it was mostly SFF, and that meant I was doomed to the sidelines.

Even in my mid-20s, Borderlands felt affirming.

My friends are not SFF nerds. I don’t have a book club, I don’t go to conventions, I don’t have a fandom, I don’t play TCGs, and I don’t feel connected to the stereotypical nerd community. I still needed Borderlands, or maybe, of course I needed Borderlands.

The new Apple Store is gorgeous. I feel like you always see it from the river, but what impresses me is the richness of architecture in view.