Every foreign student posting full freight at Harvard is the equivalent of exporting 50-75 iPhones, and that’s just the direct exchange of foreign dollars for a domestic service. It’s crass as shit, but you’d think these buffoons would understand higher education as a luxury export.

I love sleeping with the windows open, until 5:30am when the birds go fucking insane.

We’ve had to say no to the first pup, even though we were approved for adoption. They slipped in at the last moment that she was heartworm positive and they had not used the recommended treatment course. This would have meant thousands of dollars, but more importantly, three months of crate rest.

I just didn’t feel comfortable bringing a new dog into my home and spending the first three months of our relationship constantly begging a puppy to be calm and stay in their crate so their heart rate doesn’t get up and they get an embolism.

Potty training under these conditions, and building a healthy relationship with my dog, felt like the wrong choice for us.

Hoping we find another pup soon.

Manuel is great, but his take on the web sometimes is really frustrating.

The web, the “information system that enables content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists”, the one that was here from the beginning, before Google, before ad tech, before socials, that web is here to stay.

Yeah, I was here for that web. Before Google and ad-tech there were still ads, but more importantly, the web was quiet and discovery was hard. The way we found places to spend time online were still via search and social sharing. Search existed well before Google, and before search, we used directories. And before social media platforms, we still discovered web content by clicking links in other web content.

The original web hosting and blogging platforms that were most successful all were social networks. LiveJournal, Blogspot, heck even Geocities to an extent all had forms of native sharing of links to other sites made on their services. They all succeeded not just on making it easier to host a website, but through providing a network effect. You got the most out of LiveJournal by following other LiveJournal accounts. You chose LiveJournal or Xanga based on where your friends and people were.

Before (and concurrently, of course) personal blogging, so much of the best “web” content was found on topical forums, and before (and concurrently, of course) that it was newsgroups. The best of the web is written by people for other people where other people share and see it. The “web” part is links, that made all of this content accessible and shareable and connected anywhere you went.

Search and social sharing have always been how we discover content on the web. There is no web without both. There are websites, but the actual “network” is built on links, and we find links when people share those links or use some other aggregator to find links they’re interested in.

The idea that search is not important to personal websites is crazy talk– it was and is still a great way to find webpages. The idea that social sharing isn’t important to websites is crazy talk– I love to find and follow links from blog posts, but that’s no more or less social than links posted wherever people who share my interests post links.

I agree with so much of what Manuel writes and respect him a ton, but he also takes a stand on the internet that based in a countercultural ideal that bleeds into an ahistorical picture of an early internet that never existed and would have never existed because it doesn’t work. We can reject how todays social media platforms make us feel, as products or companies, without forgetting that building a network where people can discover both content and people relevant to their interests is the whole of the web we care about. Corporate, small, quiet, indie, fedi-, whatever– all forms of a web that works is a web that connects and makes forming connections easier.

Links are what make it a web and not a document. Links are the key to hypermedia of all kinds. Any attack on links is an attack on the web.

Importantly, search is one of the most powerful ways to find the right links. And in a rare virtuous cycle, since the dawn of Google, links are currency. Not only does search help you gather links, providing links improves search. Search has incentivized connecting the web. The more connected content is, the more likely it is to appear in search. In turn, search is improved, becoming more likely to surface relevant content on the whole.

It is a huge mistake to write off the importance of search as though it is only meaningful for content farming or commercial use of publishing on the internet.

Manuel writes:

Because the true soul of the web is not the never-ending quest to make money, but rather the desire to create, to express ourselves, to connect.

I just think Manuel is completely wrong about how the connect part happens.

I beg of you, if you have a blog, and you can’t stop tinkering with your hosting, please for the love of god keep your RSS URL the same or do proper forwarding.

Wheel of Time being cancelled makes complete sense– I’m the target audience, and I watched 2 or 3 episodes and bailed. Sorry, but I’m definitely the problem.