I’ve actually experimented with this.
During the past month, I cross-posted everything I’ve written on the Fediverse to LinkedIn.
You’d think content made for the Fediverse would fail on LinkedIn—but no. My impressions have actually skyrocketed.
The mistake people often make on social media is deleting posts that aren’t popular.
I know why they do this—it’s a status thing.
But small interactions are often more impactful than giant ones.
Writing for the Fediverse is a cheat code for writing other forms of social media because lack of feed algorithms and social discovery means you can only appeal to a human audience.
And when you write for a human audience, you’re zeroing in on what actually matters.
It’s funny when people say TikTok brain rot should be banned. I realize all these arguments also applied to rock music. Let’s go back in time for a bit.
When rock music first emerged in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, what did people complain about? They said it appealed to base sexual desires, encouraged drug culture, and made the generation self-centered.
We laugh at those complaints now, dismissing them as moral panic, but you know what? They were right. Rock music did usher in a sexually permissive culture—it paralleled the free-love era. It glorified promiscuity and groupies.
Looking back, it’s frightening how normalized it was for rock stars to prey on underage girls. Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin. Elvis met Priscilla Presley when she was far from legal.
This wasn’t even that long ago. Twenty years ago, there was a movie called Almost Famous, and one of the main characters was a teenage girl groupie. It wasn’t framed as creepy. It was just a story.
And the drugs? Oh, the drugs. How many people got into drugs because they went to a rock show? How many died because drugs were romanticized in rock culture? Even the rock stars themselves—so many died young. The “27 Club” exists because so many musicians didn’t make it past that age, succumbing to addiction and its consequences. Alcohol, too, counts as a drug in this equation. A lot of lives were lost because rock culture made substance abuse seem cool.
But here’s the thing: alongside all this negativity, rock music brought incredible self-expression. One of the originators, Little Richard, was not only a musical icon but one of the first gay figures in the public eye. Later, artists like Elton John, Freddie Mercury, and Boy George expanded representation for LGBTQ+ communities. Rock also created opportunities for women—Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, and Madonna thrived because of it.
I’m not excusing the negative aspects, but we have to acknowledge that rock music fundamentally changed society. It shaped the current political climate. Those who grew up in the rock era, the “Me Generation,” got older and carried that self-focus with them. We even coined terms like “yuppies” to describe them. These are the people who came from the culture of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and they shaped the world we live in now.
Yet despite all this, do I think rock and roll should’ve been banned? No. You can’t ban a culture. Try, and it finds a way to thrive.
Now, let’s bring this back to TikTok. I’m not a fan of the platform—I think it’s caused plenty of harm. Has it caused more harm than rock music? No, not even close. But yes, TikTok has shortened attention spans. The algorithm has contributed to depression and social disengagement. It’s caused real problems.
At the same time, it’s expanded the possibilities for self-expression. People are creating things with short-form video that were unimaginable even 20 years ago. The genie is out of the bottle. The US government can ban the platform, but they can’t ban the medium. People have discovered a new way to express themselves, and they’re not going to stop because TikTok is gone.
So the real question is: how do we make this better? How do we encourage the positives of this new form of expression while addressing the negatives? Can we guide it in a more positive direction? I don’t know. But banning TikTok won’t make the medium disappear.
We need to be thoughtful and recognize that a new art form has arrived. Where it goes from here, I don’t know. But it’s not going away just because someone tries to ban it.
Apparently, the Canadian spelling of the word “neighbour” is deemed hate speech by Elon Musk—and got this account suspended on Twitter.
Putting a “u” between “o” and “r” is apparently a hate crime.
The platform for “free speech,” am I right?
https://vancouversun.com/news/cheeky-penthouse-sign-vancouver-nightclub-suspended-x
Here’s how sneaky Pierre Poilievre is:
When a reporter asked him if he accepts Elon Musk’s endorsement, Poilievre doesn’t answer with “yes”. Instead, he says it would be nice if Tesla built factories in Canada and created local jobs.
He’s playing both people who love and hate Musk.
The more viral a post is, the less likely people are to check for context.
Which is why, when I do effort posts, I prefer to put everything in one post rather than split up into a thread.
Even this does guarantee people will read the whole thing. Often they don’t get beyond the first sentence.
This—THIS is LinkedIn Lunacy.
Betting on AI to be right in a legal matter is just asking for trouble. I mean, good on Claude for getting it right this time. But oh man, getting it wrong?
That might cost you way more than $5,000.
One of my favourite hobbies is trawling around Apple Music for obscure-but-good albums, and recording them to cassette tape.
It’s the easiest way to make physical copies—and completely legal too.
Holy crap! This can’t be real, right?
If that’s the real master tape for Miles Davis’ album Kind of Blue, and it’s only selling for $2,000, that’s wild!
I mean, I’d need some sort of verification to know if that’s legit!
Here’s 900ft of sealed open reel tape.
I will open this up because I am dying to record from Apple Music Lossless to 7.5 IPS to see what happens. 
I was tempted to open this up, but I just can’t. 😬
It’s my only Fuji Type II cassette.
They don’t make chromium oxide tape anymore, so I have to be super choosy. 
So I got curious about the whole WWE on Netflix thing. For the first time in 25 years, tried watching WWE.
And I couldn’t make it past 30 minutes. Nothing happened. It was so unbelievably boring.
Yikes! Assassin’s Creed Shadows is delayed again!
As time goes on, things are looking dicey for Ubisoft. If this game isn’t a gigantic hit, how does this company even survive?
If I were to sum up the Fediverse’s key value, it’s this: it has an escape hatch.
And built into that escape hatch is another escape hatch.
Time to resurrect an idea that I had two years ago:
Buffer servers on the Fediverse that federate with Threads.
Specifically, servers that help people *leave* Threads, and migrate elsewhere on the Fediverse. Of course, we’d need to convince people on Threads to turn on federation.
Of course, we’d also need a means to import their old Threads posts to the Fediverse.
And we’d need to allow room for those who’d like to cut out Meta entirely via defederation.
Instead of embracing Threads, or ignoring them—think of a solid migration plan. Personally, I’m not doing it. I’m just putting this thought out there.
Canada’s entire economy is resource-based.
We send all our raw material to the USA, and what do they do? Sell it back to us as manufactured goods.
But globalism is now dead, and we’re in a protectionist world. So it’s time we started manufacturing our own stuff.
“Driver” (2024) by 金入墨 Joyking, oil on canvas
Don’t know if this is a “good” painting, but it’s certainly captivating. The driver here looks like she’s about to mow down that poor cyclist – as though she’s enraged to be slowed down. 
We’re already five years into the ‘20s, so I think it’s time to talk about the best album I’ve heard (so far) this decade.
And without a doubt, it’s No Swoon’s 2022 release of Take Your Time, which I’m honoured to own on cassette.
This is one of the most spell-binding shoegaze albums I’ve ever heard—with heavy guitar and lush femme vocals. It has everything you want: haunting melodies, tasty drum licks, and reverb drenched everywhere.
An unknown classic!
A few days ago, I recorded an album to a Type I (Fe2O3) audio cassette, and I’m curious about something.
On my good cassette deck, I hear a nice bass sound.
On my crappy boombox, the bass clips.
I know cheap decks are not so good on the high end, but why would there be clipping on the low end?