I’ve been reflecting on the issue of ethical and unethical platforms for publishing your work and promoting it.

Without getting too into the weeds most of you know about the issues with xtwitter. I closed all my accounts there several months ago and frankly was never a avid or heavy user so I don’t claim that that was a great sacrifice.

But I’ve backed up all my meta data and have prepared for the possibility that I’ll be shutting down my Facebook and Instagram accounts at some point in a foreseeable future. It’s the year of the snake after all isn’t it!

Some of the current WIP on my desk as eye candy!
Scroll down page or click to open the slide show for more!

I started link blogging on sequential directly again, posting new C-Lists once a week. And set up accounts on BlueSky [sequential] and Cara over the last year. Others as well but those ones are my prefered options and seem to be doing well. I’m not prepared yet to leave Meta, and I feel similarly about Substack for the moment. But to varying degrees they are both up for consideration now.

I don’t think Zuckerberg has ever been an ethical actor but he’s taken a turn for the worst more recently. And I feel that Chris Best is at best, being foolishly ideological about his idealized notion of absolute free speech.

His recent statement on Substack Reads, I take issue with giving Elon any credit at all for standing up for free speech. That claim is either knowingly disingenuous, or he’s trying to diplomatically differentially opacificate his critiques with faint praise.

The fact that once he took over, the only actual free speech is that which praises him or agrees with him underlines the point. I left a note stating my thoughts but I’m sure that’s lost in the flood of comments there. Many have expressed their issues with his position, I will be watching what they do next.

Unfortunately I do like the platform and the independence journalism that’s thriving on it. And follow several like Drop Site and Zeteo that I find invaluable right now.

And really, I don’t want them to get into moderating, so as to maintain the unfettered journalistic landscape evolving there either frankly. I don’t think a more active hand in gating what is published is the right call at all.

But I do think morally, he should demonetize Nazis and hate based ideological content creators at the very least. It’s not so much a question of free speech but facilitating the financial profiteering off fundamentally antisocial ideologies that break the social contract intrinsic to tolerance in a free Society. Demagoguery for profit should not be allowed.

So all to say I was pondering to myself what should I do for mailing lists, and media blogging?

A look at the first 7 [8 if you count page 0 here] from Nuts,
the second book of Dream Life | a late coming of age.
Hopefully te first chunk is to be published in may of this year!
I’ve set myself this as a goal.

I’m embarrassed to say it took me several days to simply think ‘oh that’s right I used to do that on my own site didn’t I!‘. An old writer acquaintance reviving webrings got me going on that tack of thinking finally. So obvious this side of it.

So I’ve moved the link for my work blog back to the  top of the menu list to reprioritize that aspect of this site! There will be things to consider like increased server demands again but I think for the time being that should be fine.

And I think what I’ll do is continue to use the substack as a way to update but the body of the post will mostly direct here. But in time I can set up my own native email list via this domain too.

I think its time

we flee the walled gardens

and venture back into

the wild webs,

don’t you?

More to come soon
but this will mark the official rebooting of my old workdiary,
the precursor to the processpod! 

Stay safe and see you soon.

~Max