Diary of a digital vegan
Somewhat inspired by Justin Warren's 100th edition of The Crux (a highly recommended newsletter) I thought I'd try my hand at a weekly posts on the topics that have caught my eye. It'll be an eclectic mix of politics and tech which will probably appeal to at least five people but is an exercise in trying to develop some writing discipline. If there's no post next week, I'm sure you'll cope.
I really enjoyed a recent episode of Search Engine which was essentially an extended interview with the always interesting Ezra Klein. There was a bit about half way through which really resonated abut "the Left" being a bit afraid of personal responsibility and how our choices as a consumer matter. Our consumer habits will determine the success or failure of the things we love so put your money, or at least you revenue generating (through advertisements) attention, where your mouth is.
He uses the phrase "digital vegan" which I quite like to describe a digital purist. I'm certainly not one, but I'm a Pescetarian working on becoming vegetarian or something like that.
Fuck big corporations. They don't care about you. It's capitalism, stupid. Guy Rundle made the point in Crikey:
That is the central paradox of capitalism that few can get their minds around. The actual activity of the company is a secondary effect. The essence of the thing, by use, becomes the contingent extra. At some point in the life of a large company, it must become the best possible fiduciary decision to do your stated purpose “badly”, with no regard for the customer.
Hence, the Enshittification of everything.
I poor over this blog post by Derek Sivers regularly which breaks down how to replace all your various services with non-Google ones. But working in tech (as I do), it's impossible to isolate yourself from these big corporations. I use more Microsoft products at the moment than I have in about two decades (VS Code, Github etc).
I occasionally write emails to politicians and recently email Michelle Rowland about the rolling back of a total gambling advertising ban. It's piss weak and I encourage you to contact your local member about the same.
Speaking of piss weak, the Victorian government has reversed the decision to increase the age of criminal responsibility to 14. There are 12 year old children in detention in Victoria. Primary School age. They are nearly universally from a highly traumatised background with significant developmental delays due to their background of trauma. And our First Nations peoples are considerably over-represented. I strongly recommend sending the Premier an email as well (jacinta.allan@parliament.vic.gov.au).
On the other hand, the Victorian Government is introducing pill testing, a common sense approach which I have written to the Premier and Health Minister's about previously. I'm glad to see they have come to their senses.
Speaking of government's did you know that you can set up a proxy for Signal (the messaging app). Meredith Whittaker, the President of the Signal Foundation was recently on 7:30 which is well worth a watch.
Speaking of privacy related things, I recently spent a few weeks in South-east Asia and, anticipating many insecure public Wifi connections, I installed Tailscale on my NAS at home and used it as an exit node so all my traffic was routed through home, via a secure VPN. It worked pretty well, I could use Australian streaming services without any issues.
Speaking of Tailscale, this was a good read on the complexity of technology these days which I enjoyed.
Finally, looping back to digital veganism, RRR are running their annual Raidothon and you should subscribe if you want to support an amazing, independent radio station that contributes a huge amount to the creative industries here in Melbourne.