One year later, the problem with social media is clear: PEBKAC

I don’t usually buy into “blame the user” for most problems, but our collective addiction to vanity metrics ruined everything, and even those who didn’t buy into them have suffered the consequences. The problem exists between keyboard and chair.

In Praise of Virtual “Work” (aka Football Manager)

Some people play games to relax, to escape the tedium and/or stress of their jobs, to challenge their reflexes — physical and mental. Football Manager is a bizarre combination of both, which really should not be appealing at all. It can be stressful and tedious, while also challenging your mental abilities because, at the end of the day, it’s a glorified spreadsheet with multiple pivot tables — and I love it so much, it’s taken me a week to stop playing it long enough to write this post about it!

Why I Don’t Give Career Advice: Army Dazed

I was tickled when I saw how Microcosm titled our conversation about my career path in the industry, and listening to it for the first time, it’s another reminder that my path was a relatively unusual one, difficult and unlikely to be replicated in the structure of the current industry. That said, I do think there’s still an opportunity (and more importantly, a need) for people to be more outspoken about the various challenges the industry is dealing with, dismantling whisper networks to level the playing field for those coming from non-traditional backgrounds.

The Year-Long Scavenger Hunt (A 2023 Reading Challenge)

Comments on blogs aren’t really a thing anymore, especially on this here blog, but I occasionally have someone pop in via WordPress Reader, I think, and while checking out the blog of one such commenter, It’s The Bageler!, I discovered “The Year-Long Scavenger Hunt” at Birdie’s Book Nook.

On Mastodon — Four Months (and Five Years) Later

I still don’t consider Mastodon a straight Twitter alternative — at least not the Twitter we’ve come to know during the Trump/Musk Error — but it has replaced the Twitter I used to know and love back in the day…. Contrary to some self-serving media coverage, people continue to sign up and kick the tires — most surges apparently align to Musk’s latest shenanigans — and a lot of them are sticking around and, like me, enjoying the experience.