Last week, I fell out of my good habits again. I skipped Analysis and spent the entire time browsing Reddit or reading Dragon Ball (which, by the way, I finished within 3 days). I promised myself that after the election, I’d stop browsing that hellsite for good. On the weekend, I couldn’t help but notice how often I picked up my phone, searched for the duckduckgo browser and began to type in the URL. This sequence of steps was fully automatic, around 20 times I stopped myself while “re” was in the search bar.

So instead, I’ve been wasting my time with other things. Writing blog posts, making (bad) music in OpenMPT, beating Getting Over It for the third time and being terrible at CS2 (1-12 on Wingman with my brother). I didn’t leave the house at all. I solved the series (save for this week’s analysis, which I did today), so I’ve got that going for me. But I still feel that I need to find something to do in my free time that doesn’t involve sitting in front of a computer screen.

I’ll probably buy the second book in the Trisolaris series. Perhaps the central library has it — my city’s definitely doesn’t. I’m still on Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan at the moment — an important and engaging read (until I put it down for a whole week and forget it as the pages get crumpled up in my schoolbag). Today, I read something else.

There’s a blogger in Australia going by Nik who made a post entitled “I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again“. This individual’s incredibly well-crafted and well-written blog is what inspired me to take up the mantle of blogger. He’s the reason I’m reading Taleb’s book, as well as Dragon Ball (the latter only through a passing mention, the former by strong recommendation). I wrote him an E-Mail commending his writing, and he actually responded, so I guess the Internet isn’t quite dead yet. If you are at all interested in computer science as practiced in the real world or in having a non-bullshit job in the future I can only recommend reading it. Start from the beginning (or the end, I’m not your dad) and the gripping style will do the rest. I’ve re-read quite a few of the posts there (and I never re-read anything).

The other blogger by whom I was inspired was Cory Doctorow. His “memex method” — well, I guess I’m testing it right now, aren’t I? In any case, his posts are more political and his attitude is no less no-bullshit. From what I can gather from xkcd, he’s a legend in the internet blogging space (no, I won’t call it the “blogosphere”). Read up for insightful takes on AI, the law and “enshittification”. Where Ludic has a frog’s-eye view of the issues in the tech industry, Pluralistic is a bird’s-eye view.

Check them out if you get the chance. Also, if you’re Nik reading this, thanks dude!

UPDATE: He’s dropped another banger. https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/why-i-will-always-be-angry-about-software-engineering/