Dallineation

A friend reached out with a dilemma. He lives far away from the meeting place of his religious community. They use Zoom to broadcast their meetings for those who can't attend in-person. For many reasons, he avoids using proprietary software (software that is not free as in freedom), but he was seriously thinking about installing Zoom in this case. I can empathize with his dilemma. All of us have to make choices like this every day.

I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus calling for a decentralized internet infrastructure. Within the span of a few weeks we have seen web outages on a global scale caused by problems with AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft Azure, and now Cloudflare.

I was blessed to be able to get a used HP laptop in practically new condition with decent specs for free, so I installed Linux on it and I'm going to try using it as my primary personal computer for at least the rest of 2025 – about six weeks.

I like to sit in the living room every morning while eating breakfast and looking east out the window. Weekday mornings this time of year I don't see much. It's still dark. But on weekends, when I can stay in bed and eat breakfast later, I see more.

I had already been leaning towards simplifying my physical media collecting by ditching vinyl records, but a video with some startling information gave me the push I needed.

We had a decent VHS tape collection in my family when I was a kid. Some were store-bought. Some were recorded from TV, like episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation or Disney Sunday Movies.

I have many concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) and LLMs in their present state. I'll elaborate on these concerns in future posts, but I wanted to make it clear that until my concerns are resolved, this is an AI-free blog.

I feel the need to get back into the habit of writing regularly. And I can't think of a better way to do it than to take the 100 Days to Offload challenge a second time.

For a long time – at least a decade and a half – I have been learning about and gaining greater understanding of the problems with Big Tech and how pervasive it is in our lives. I have tried numerous times to move away from using proprietary, corporate-controlled technology but have always been drawn back to using it for one reason or another, burying my concerns in the dark recesses of my mind. But recent events have drawn those concerns again to the forefront of my thoughts. And I feel a great sense of urgency to try to adopt and use freer technologies.

I took down my blog because, for a brief time, I was trying live scambaiting on Twitch and I wanted to be extra careful about privacy. But I'm not doing that anymore and there are some things I have been wanting to write about. So the blog is back!