Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.
I smoked from the age of 13 to the age of 33. I loved smoking. I loved having something to do with my hands. I loved making friends by cadging — or sharing — cigarettes. I loved learning Zippo tricks, finding beautiful old cigarette cases at flea markets, learning to roll a cigarette, then learning how to do it one-handed. I loved the excuse to take breaks from my work.
But I hated smoking. I knew it would kill me. I watched it kill people I loved. They died hard. Gradually, the quixotic pride I felt in the lengths we smokers went to in order to engage in our increasingly disfavored habit turned to horror.
There was a time when I would read the whole internet, every day.
Oh, not all of it. But when Usenet — the internet’s first widescale social media — was bridged into Fidonet (a network of dial-up BBSes), my local free bulletin board system began to import several hundred Usenet newsgroups, updating several times per day. I would dial up to this BBS and read my way through all of the new posts on these groups.
Early on, this was easy. Then, as traffic picked up, and as more newsgroups entered the feed, it got harder. Then it got impossible.
