Get yourself a sparkling water dispenser and make your own at home! Less bottle waste and you can get refillable co2 containers for the device.

I’m so used to generated art, that seeing something with intact details like the text is actually surprising and refreshing!

Algorithms have become so powerful that for a forum community to form, there are so many hurdles.

Biggest issue right now are the information “silos” that any algorithm-led social media platform algorithm will choose for you. It’ll show you similar content, but rarely from the same person because there are just so many people posting content online that there’s always a next better thing, a trend to chase. People who chase those trends end up exhausting themselves and replaced by others who are willing to be more different and engaging, until they get burnt out as well.

I used to follow a few forums, and I loved the mindless scroll of Reddit, but I found myself going back to YouTube or Instagram when I slid further into the doom scroll mentality. Those forums have now gone, due to increasing costs of hosting, and being unable to monetise a community to a sustainable degree. Reddit have understood the value of user attention and platform control to push their ads, got greedy, and locked everything down. Instagram (and meta) are, in my opinion, the leaders in algorithm based social networks, and they drive the trends without being in direct control of them.

The emotional rollercoaster that I’ve caught myself experiencing, where I get a photo of a friend suggested to me, and I start subconsciously comparing myself, only for the next post to be a soothing, highly targeted video that the algorithm knows I would enjoy and it dulls the emotional impact of the previous post, making me forget about it. The algorithm doesn’t care how you feel, but it knows what will make you engaged.

My reply became a bit of a rant about algorithms, but that’s where we’re headed. In fact, a friend has a theory that suggests that we’ll be reduced to a burst of quick content blocks. Inputs of little importance, like yes/no questions, because only us, humans, can make those little decisions that will add up to something bigger. When we get exhausted we get our rest and back in the machine we go. What would the bigger thing be? Who knows.

Gosh look at me, I sound like one of those internet prophets that talk out of their arse.

Been using VideoLite a lot, there’s a single ad that plays as you open it, and then you’re set. Optionally you can pay £1.59 every three months and skip that initial ad.

All the cousins you’ve never heard of suddenly chime in