Blogging

So here’s the thing:

I like blogging. I find it fun writing about various subjects and it’s a great excuse to delve deeper and organize my thoughts on my many interests.

Due to the casual nature I’ve always approached it with, however, I tend to forget to actually sit down and do it. I’ve tried different schedules to help me with this problem, but they never seem to work. I always end up with fifteen different unfinished draft posts in my queue and no new posts.

In my many attempts to turn into a consistent blogger, I have noticed a few things about the way I write posts:

• If I don’t finish writing a post in one sitting, it is very unlikely it will ever get completed.
• Boxing myself into a specific subject can give me a block when it comes to writing.
• Deadlines don’t motivate me when it comes to writing, at least not as much as they should.
• Building a backlog of almost finished posts gives me a false sense of security in how well I’m doing.
• I tend to be a perfectionist with some of my posts, holding them under harsh quality control standards, and thinking they are not allowed to be short for some reason.

So now as I attempt to jump into blogging again, I must decide if I want to work through these specific problems I have, or work around them.

Looking at these observations, I notice most of my problems are in some way related to discipline when it comes to actually finishing a project. So however I attempt to get past these issues, building discipline will be key.

In the meantime, I will start with a goal of posting twice a month. I won’t confine myself to a specific subject, and I will try to avoid worrying about how long the posts are.

Also, I will try to figure out a better way to write conclusions.

Memories (a poetic essay of sorts)

It is theorized that all lasting memories are simply memories of memories. Which, as we understand the brain scientifically in our day is unable to be disproved, for according to observation, the only way for a memory to last from short term to long term is for it to revisited, electrically stamped upon our neurons for safe keeping.

But if indeed the world as we understand it is put so simply as electrical and magnetic waves crashing through the air, only to be picked up by our attuned nervous systems and translated into tastes, sights, smells, and touches; then forever downgraded to a memory (though only short term), and finally if that moment is considered thought worthy, a long lasting is kept to maybe have a possibility of being used again for some purpose.

Then does that not make every sensation around us but a memory as soon as it is given time to enter our thoughts? The stable ground beneath your feet, the air subtly moving about the room, the unique taste and smell of the location lingering in our mind, becoming a permanent part of the past before it even had time to be part of the present?

Could one not then build up a reality within their own mind, and simply by remembering the very thoughts of this fabricated course of events over and over, convince themselves this turn of events actually occurred? I believe this to be possible. I believe we all do this, to one degree or another, for this is the only way to make any sense of the chaos of atoms and electrons constantly bombarding our consciousness.

But if the very reality around us is simply self-created memories, then is that not the whole of our worth? Reality’s worth itself? Nay, I say.

If reality is but a memory within my own mind, then I would be unable to translate these memories and come to the conclusion of these words before you, and they would not be becoming a memory of your own as these words pierce into your mind. No, what this means is not that the present is brought to less worth because it is but a memory, but the entirety of time itself is brought to more worth.

The past, a collective of memories passed on throughout generations of memory bearers, to reach our ears and eyes and be absorbed and molded by our own memories. If indeed the present is a memory of a memory being made, so much more is the past, a memory of a memory of a memory deemed worthy to remember; to transcend the minds that originally brought them into fruition.

The future, also, a memory. A memory created by those who dare to imagine things that are not yet, to repeat the mantra within their mind that it will come to be, to make it a memory of a memory before the present (or more specifically, the minds perceiving the present) creates it.

If the past, present, and future is the collective memories of mankind, then how could one deny the need to study? How could one deny the need to imagine? To create? No, not the need… The desire. Even more so than simply desire, an unquenchable urge!

But if this urge is not born from the very memories it urges to create, and if study can only bring to the conclusion that the universe is a well-oiled machine in its aid to mankind creating memories, and one feels that there must be some reason to create, some goal for mankind’s march into the future, then I cannot deny the only rational conclusion.

That the universe, and all memories within it that let us perceive it, were and are and is created, and therefore, must have an original creator.

~Toby

Random thoughts on life and organization

This blog post is not about the cereal line produced by Quaker, so if that is what you were expecting from the title, not only are you going to be disappointed, you are also a little weird.

This post is generic thoughts about life, thoughts that may or may not make sense. If you were expecting this post to make sense, than you may or may not be disappointed. If you were expecting it to not make sense, you are a little weird, or you know me in real life, which probably means you are a little weird.

With that poor excuse for an introduction over with, let us talk about life, or something like that.

I consider myself a relatively organized person. Other people people tell me I am an extremely organized person, and some people tell me I’m not organized enough. I believe them all, because ‘organized’ is a descriptor completely subjective to personal and situational context.

See, I enjoy organization. And I’ve been told I’m good at it by some people, (see above, if you have a short attention span and/or are simply skimming this post) It’s the way God made me, and I see it as one of the ways I work to fulfill the dominion mandate. Taking chaos and turning it to order is something that makes me happy, and often makes my Mother happy, especially when it involves mopping the floor.

So I like organization. (have I mentioned that yet?) Sometimes, however, I get confused, and think this is synonymous with the hatred of disorganization. Not to say one is not often paired to the other, but they are not perpetually linked. There is certain tendency among order-loving people that I’ve noticed, (and this includes me) that when it comes to unexpected circumstances that cause ripples of chaos, we tend to react, well, badly, to be generic.

Some get angry. Some just freeze. Others probably do other things. But I’m not here to talk about the reaction, but the cause. Keep in mind I’m not an expert, whatever that means, these are just random thoughts that are running through my head, in the form of questions, because I like questions, because they help in organization, which makes me happy.

If organization is the bringing order to chaos, why does this chaos faze us so? Is it possible that we are only bringing order to the already orderly if we don’t know how to handle chaos? Or maybe we don’t know how to deal with the chaos that is simply out our hands? Did we become organized because we fear chaos that which is out of our hands? Or maybe even fearful of chaos in general?

I would not be surprised the is some mix of the concepts introduced in the questions.

~Toby

Thoughts on art: Unrecognized artists

The other day, this article showed up in my twitter feed:

Congress considers bill to declare magic acts “art”

On a side note, I was kind of surprised it wasn’t tweeted by one of the several indie magicians I follow, but actually one of the several indie film studios I follow. It’s at this point I realize I tend to follow independent entertainment over mainstream. But I digress.

You might not know this about me, but I am hobbyist illusionist. (Another random side note: I prefer the term illusionist, but I’m not to picky about being called a magician. Sometimes I even call myself one, despite the preference. Also, just to be clear, I don’t mind that most others in this line of work call themselves magicians. That’s the last side note, don’t worry.)

I say hobbyist, but I’ve thought about “going pro” a couple times and actually ordering business cards, compiling sets, and trying to get gigs. When I have time, (ha!) I may end up actually doing that.

Back to the article in question, I don’t mind David Copperfield considering his craft an art. We are in agreement there, in fact, and I would have less respect for him if he didn’t consider what he did the work of an artist. (whether he’s a very good artist is a completely different debate, that involves an in depth description of the industry behind magicians today, and that’s a subject for another blog post)

I am more annoyed that Copperfield thinks we need some sort of ruling to make it “officially” an art.

I don’t know whether he just wants his work to be validated through law so he can feel good about himself, or if it’s the about the grant money that magicians could start raking in. I’d guess it’s the latter, because, you know, money.

But let me say this as a fellow artist in the same craft, one who is supposedly the prime target for such grant money: I find the idea of this bill degrading to the art.

I understand the argument for taxpayer money going to artists, despite being vehemently against this concept. But the very ideas behind the performance of these particular artists,  and the ‘tricks’ and ‘magic’ they create, is to create a connection with the audience. (Really all artists should do this, but from what I’ve seen, there seems to be less agreement about this among other mediums.)

There are too many young magicians getting into this art simply because they like tricking people, simply getting them to believe something happened when it didn’t. They miss the point. The audience is not someone you want to simply “trick” and be done with, the audience is what you want to impact. If you have no impact on your audience, (impact can be almost anything, from making them laugh, to making them think) then you are simply not a very good artist, at least in my book.

I tolerate these ‘magicians’, because the way I see it, they will want out of people tolerating being made fools of at some point, and therefore they will run out of gigs. They will either have to learn to connect with their audience, or give up the art.

This bill however, says they are artists anyway. Even if they know and believe they aren’t, simply because they hold a deck of cards and know how to do a trick. And taxpayers will become a captive audience, one they don’t have to connect with, only have to fill out the proper paperwork and meet the “artist” requirements.

Should this bill get passed, will people take advantage of this system? Undoubtedly; similar systems passed for other arts have had the same effect. But will it be a net gain on this small but growing community of artists in this field? I would guess no, but in the end I don’t think any sort of trade off in this way is a good idea.

You see, illusion is a unique art in that any performance you see could vastly effect how all future performances you see. If you see a bad painting of a tree, and then see a good painting of the same tree, the bad painting will only make the good painting seem even better. But if you see a bad performance of a card trick that gives away the whole thing, and then a great performance of the same card trick, it will degrade the good performance’s impact.

Now, part of this is due to the lack of original creations and discovery of unique mediums within this art, but again, that’s a subject for a completely different blog post. (I didn’t realize how many thoughts I had on this subject… maybe I’ll write a sequel to this blog post when I’m done writing this one)

Anyway, I don’t know Copperfield, he may simply want to make it easier on those performers starting out in this craft. His intentions may be good. But I have this thing, whenever someone says that they want the government to be doing something about anything, I translate it in my head. For example:

“I want the people who run the DMV to make a way for new artists to get off the ground.”

As an artist, not only do I find that demeaning, I find it annoying, and a little scary. I counter David Copperfield’s plans with this idea, and this applies to all arts, not just illusion:

“I want successful artists to make a way new artists to get off the ground.”

From what I hear, he’s already been doing this, quite successfully in fact. Think about it, when was the last time you heard an artist giving an acceptance speech for an award saying: “I’d like to thank the government, who gave me money.” Never They thank the artists that inspired them, both directly and indirectly.

Mr. Copperfield, if you’re reading this, how you make something an art is not by legislation or public validation, but by making more of it, and doing it well.

~Toby

(This is the first installment in a blog post series, where I talk about my thoughts on art. In case you didn’t guess, the name of the series is “thoughts on art”)

A short story I wrote a while back then forgot about

So a couple months back I experimented with a writing style and how it would interact with a specific scenario from a type of person’s view. (one who doesn’t generally get to be the narrator) I found it when sifting through old documents and decided to share. Here you go.

_________________________________________________________________

If he had not seen it with his own eyes he would not have believed it.

Of course, even then, he found it easier to come up with preposterous reasons his eyes had been mistaken than to actually admit to what he had just seen. So far the best excuse his very determined mind could come up with is ‘it was a trick of the light’.

As if light has the propensity to trick you into seeing such things. Light is simply electromagnetic energy flying through the air, and what your eyes make of it is up to how the brain decides to sort it, so the only thing that could have tricked him was indeed the same thing that was trying to convince him it was the deception of the light, that is, his own mind.

So a trick of the mind it was, some sort of unprecedented hallucination brought about by fatigue, or malnutrition, or dehydration, or possibly some form of insanity that cannot be explained. He is caught up on sleep and has been eating well, so he is inclined to think insanity. Yes, surely some sort of unknown problems within his brain’s chemistry is suddenly wreaking havoc upon how he perceives reality, he tells himself.

But what is reality but an impossible to fully measure reaction between every force in the universe colliding in different ways? He would surely be unable to think so rationally should he have gone insane, his connection to reality untethered. Which means the only possibility would be that all the events over the entirety of time somehow led up to the extremely unlikely and totally extraordinary event he has just witnessed actually being possible.

If his mind is tricking him through some sort of insanity, then it does not matter if he seems crazy to those around him in reaction to the event he has just believed himself to have witnessed, because they would be correct. Meanwhile, if was indeed perfectly sane and what he has just witnessed is indeed an actual event grounded in perceived reality, then it would seem more crazy not to react.

Therefore, he makes up his mind. He must react to what he has just seen, and under no possible version of these events would this course be perceived as anything less than normal, in the sense that any conclusion onlookers could come to by witnessing these actions be an incorrect conclusion, barring any strange and obscure reasoning being used by said onlookers, which could exist under any possible turn of events.

He waves back to the girl who has just waved at him, a smile lighting up his face.

_________________________________________________________________

Let me know what you think, It’s the first story like this I’ve written, and I’m curious as to how this story is perceived by different audiences.

~Toby

Why I deactivated my Facebook account

(This is repost from my old blog. I moved it over to see how it would look on WordPress for future reference.)

This post has been in the works for a while, and then Facebook forced my hand. But then it sat half-finished as a draft for a couple months almost a year, because I procrastinate in the form of getting distracted by other projects and forgetting about previous ones.

Let me explain.

I’ve been ranting about the Facebook news feed to my friends for a while, a lot of built up thoughts on the subject accumulating into a list of reasons not to use the news feed. I still did, until a couple days months ago. When Facebook lied to me. Before I explain about that, for the sake of suspense, and to put it in the proper context, I give you the original reasons why I hated the news feed.

Problem 1 – The Algorithms

Ah yes, Algorithms in general social media feeds. Some hate em’. Everyone else doesn’t know what they really are. But if they did, I’m pretty sure they would hate them too. The algorithms are, in my opinion, the root of everything wrong with the Facebook News Feed.

For those that don’t know, what the News Feed algorithms are supposed to do are keep track of what posts you “interact” with, (meaning liking, commenting on, clicking on links, etc.) and tries to come up with more things you’d want to see from this data.

The problem is, the algorithms in Facebook’s feed not only keep track of what you interact with to decide what to put in your feed, but also what the people you interact with interact with. And if you’re aware of this, like I was when I was on Facebook, it puts you in a constant state of indecision.

(“Do I really want to like this post? I know I like the post, but it will affect my News Feed if I actually like it on Facebook.”)

On top of this, not all interactions are created equal. While it makes sense a comment will affect the news feed more than a like, a heavy bias is put towards none other than link clicks.

Meaning if you click one link-baity article that actually looks interesting to you and may even be well written, Facebook will see that as a sign that you like all link bait articles, particularly when the ones that friend shares, and it will put more of these in your News Feed. This made me afraid to click on any links at all, for fear of rendering my already useless News Feed impossibly even more useless.

Furthermore, the algorithms also opened the floodgates for posts from non-friends appearing in the News Feed, which I will address in the next topic. Which is:

Problem 2 – The favoritism towards those with lots of “friends”

The problem for me was that the entire thing was optimized for people who would add every single passing acquaintance as a friend and actually interact with them. Or even people only half as extreme as that. Or a quarter.

I prided myself in keeping my friends list count to a minimum. I figured even with the algorithms, an element of somewhat randomness, I would be able to use the same principle as I was taught for deck-building in most TCG’s. If you keep your card count to as low as possible, then you get to the stuff you actually want faster. Except in this case, instead of essential basic lands and mythic rare hard hitters, you had relatives and best friends you really want to keep up with.

The problem was, that soon after the algorithms came into play, a new wild card entered the Facebook news feed: The non-friend.

Suddenly instead of having a pre-built deck of friends, parallel to Magic the Gathering, it became a game of Dominion where the cards I get are people, and I’m stuck with them unless I trash them, which might insult them in real life, and I’m playing against Mark Zuckerburg, whose deck is just made of Torturers, and he’s throwing negative victory points in my hand in the form of mutual friends posts I really don’t care about.

In other words, I had not control over what actually appeared in my News Feed. Which needless to say, did not make the News Feed very helpful to me.

But what was actually causing the problem here? Once again, the answer lies inherently in the algorithms. The thing is, these algorithms were built to fill up the feed with as many things that will make the Facebook user spend more time in the News Feed, as much time as possible in fact.

So if you have a long friends list, that’s great, it has a lot to work with. But if you keep your friends list short, like I did, then it doesn’t have anything to work with, so it just fills in the blank space with things like “your great great Aunt liked this post from somebody you don’t know and never will” or “that acquaintance you added just to be polite commented on his college buddies picture of a birthday party in Canada”

One or two of these I don’t mind. but it got to the point where this was literally half my News Feed. And many of these posts I couldn’t even interact with, due to the privacy settings of the Facebook users that posted them.

Yes, you read that right. I was getting posts in my News Feed I wasn’t even allowed to like.

So what could I do to turn to get all this stuff out of my News Feed that I didn’t want? Surely Facebook has multiple options for users who want a slightly different Facebook experience right? I mean, if you can change the website language to ‘Pirate’, why wouldn’t there be options for the News Feed? You’d think so, but there was absolutely:

Problem 3 – No customization

But wait Toby, isn’t there a little button that lets you view posts sorted by “newest first” instead of “top stories”? Why yes, yes there is. Kind of.

The falsity that is the “newest first” feed

First of all, while not a huge problem, when you set this option, Facebook will constantly have a ribbon at the top of your feed asking “if you want to switch back to top stories”. As if the only way someone would want to use their supposed customization of the News Feed is by some sort of mistake that they don’t know how to remedy.

But the “newest first” setting is still plagued by the Algorithms trying to fill up the feed, but now they are constrained by sorting things in chronological order, which makes it a huge mess. It constantly gives you updates about post interactions by your friends in order to actually put things in your News Feed as often as the algorithms demand. Things like “your friend liked this post that already popped up in the feed” or “your friend’s grandmother commented on their photo from five years ago”. True story.

And this News Feed still has mutual friend’s posts show up when your friends interact with them, in my case even more than when in “top stories” mode.

Well at least I see everything when it happens, even if there’s still tons of things I don’t care about in the feed, right? Well, no. Even with adding tons of needless or unwanted specific updates about likes on posts or mutual friends lives, and constantly begging me to switch back to the “top stories”, the algorithms will omit posts by my friends that they think I don’t want to see. Or posts that simply don’t have enough likes.

So no matter what News Feed setting you use, the people who get likes and comments will show up in mine and other’s feeds, and therefore get more likes and comments, and those that don’t get likes and comments won’t show up in the feed, and therefore will not get any their posts seen unless they are in somebody’s stalker feed. (Sorry, the “close friends” feed)

The joke that is the “improve your News Feed” survey

And before you tell me “But Toby, you can take a survey to improve your News Feed!” I will tell you that the laughable excuses for surveys I took tens of times never seemed to affect my News Feed in any way.

It’s possible this was a problem specific to, probable even, as I have been told mythic tales by friends and family of the survey asking questions like “do you want to see posts like this in your feed?” but every single time I took the survey it only asked me one question, about an accompanied post. One question, over, and over, and over again.

“Does this feel like an ad to you?”

Pardon my French, but Qu’est ce que ça veut dire, Facebook? What does that even mean? It either is ad, or it isn’t. Either they paid you to put it in my feed, or the algorithms actually computed that I might want it there. It is either meant to advertise, or it isn’t.

And how can I feel like something is an ad?

The survey shows me a friend sharing a news article. “Does this feel like an ad to you?” I suppose they could be advertising for their favorite presidential candidate, the definition could be a little subjective there, but I don’t feel like it’s an ad. It is either an ad to me, or it is not an ad to me.

The survey shows me an ad for diet coke. “Does this feel like an ad to you?” No it doesn’t feel like an ad. It is an ad.

The survey shows me a picture of a friend holding their newborn baby. “Does this feel like an ad to you?” What!? It’s like some sort of twisted psychiatric session I didn’t even ask for.

“Hey, social media, can you show me better posts in the News Feed?”

“Let’s talk about your emotions related to your friend constantly posting pictures of their children.”

“What?”

How does it make you feel?”

What does that even…”

“Be honest: Does it feel like an ad?”

So that’s the most annoying things about the News Feed to me. And you might be like “So what? Stop complaining and just stop using it.” And after all these things piled up, I did for the most part. I added the people I actually wanted to my stalker feed, (sorry again. I’m just calling it what it is) then I only used the News Feed when I actually specifically wanted to waste my time, or find internet debates to do research for my show, (Someone’s wrong on the internet, or SWOTI. Watch the first episode here! #ShamelessPlug)

But then, while I was in the middle of one of my rare times of scrolling through the News Feed, when I saw it. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but it made me stop. I narrowed my eyes. I didn’t know for sure until twenty minutes later, when I had proved it with the help of my sister. Facebook lied to me.

The bald faced lie Facebook told me

The thing I saw in my feed may have looked normal at first glance. I might have scrolled past it if I hadn’t been paying attention.

It simply said that one of my friend’s had liked a post, then it displayed the post. It was from some random pages that share random BuzzFeed type news things. This post was a link titled “15 Shocking images, #15 can traumatize you!”

It’s the kind of thing you might expect in your News Feed because an annoying friend or relative liked, commented on, or even shared it. But the problem was, the News Feed said that my sister, Elsie, had liked it. And she and I have had long talks talking about how dumb the “BuzzFeed click bait ‘news source’ article” fad was. It quite simply wasn’t the type of post or page Elsie would normally interact with.

If it had been anyone else I knew any less on my friends list, I might have simply filed it away as weird, then continued scrolling. But I knew Elsie’s thoughts on these types of articles well. And more importantly, she was three rooms away, and I could go ask her about it.

I showed her the post. She denied liking it. Our first thought was actually that she might have been hacked. But here’s the thing: Throughout the entire list of the 25,000 people who had liked the post, the list stored on Facebook’s servers mind you, Elsie was not on it.

So according to Facebook, and Elsie, she had not liked the post. But Facebook told me she had, for the sole purpose of having the post come up in my News Feed. Facebook had lied.

But why, you might ask? What motivations could Facebook possibly have for doing this? Was it some sort of glitch? Not so, for after I told my friends about this, they started crosschecking some of the weird stuff in their feed and realizing it was happening there too. My brother caught several more lies about Elsie liking things in his feed alone.

What does this mean? I can only speculate. But the most rational conclusion I could come to is that Facebook is getting paid by some pages to have them show up in the feed. Who knows how often such things show up your feed. But how do they keep from getting caught by the general populace? The answer is the same complaint I’ve been bringing up throughout this whole thing.

Algorithms.

The algorithms already keep track of everything you interact with. Why shouldn’t they be able figure out to replicate it in your friends’ feeds? Confused? Let’s use a hypothetical example.

Joe is democrat and a liberal. He likes a lot of articles supporting democratic policies on a lot of pages run by other people similar to him in this way. Suppose another page that Joe does not follow approaches Facebook and says: “We post a lot of things Democrats liberals would like. Have some money.”

So Facebook is able to use its collected data to figure out who would like such posts, and then insert these posts into the feeds of those people’s friends. It does this to Joe’s friends’ feeds.

So if Joe has 5000 friends, what is the density of the sun?

(Sorry, I’ve been studying for the SAT)

I know this sounds a lot like I’m a paranoid conspiracy theorist. You might be saying, “Why would Facebook do something so risky?”

First, I’d like you to consider this quote:

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

That quote is from Mark Zuckerberg, creator and CEO of Facebook. No, it’s not proof, I just wanted you to consider the quote.

Oh, but don’t worry, there’s proof.

See, Facebook has already done risky things in the News Feed. And they were found out. And credible News sites wrote articles about. But almost nobody I’ve talked to has read these articles. Only speculation on this front, but it might have something to do with the fact that they mysteriously never ended up in the News Feed. Or it might just be that people find the news boring.

Facebook has no qualms about testing their power

The events I’m speaking of can be summarized in this article from the Guardian. If you don’t think it’s credible for some reason, just google “Facebook mood control”. It’s been covered by everyone from Forbes to the New York Times. I just thought this article explained the situation the best.

To sum up what happened in my own words, Facebook decided to test to see if the News Feed affected people’s real life moods.

So they gave some people happy News Feeds with positive articles, and those people started using more positive words when posting on Facebook. They were generally happier about life.

And then they gave some people a news feed filled with news about disasters and generally how bad the world was. These people started being more negative on Facebook, and their outlook on life became bleak.

All this was without asking these Facebook users if they wanted to participate in the study. Why should they? If they told them, it would give inaccurate results. And besides, they all read and agreed to the terms and conditions, right?

Facebook changed the mood of over half a million people just to see if they could. I would compare this to a child roasting ants with a magnifying glass, but that would honestly be giving them too much credit. Or not enough, depending how you look at it.

The child destroys the insects to show his power to them, but this experiment was done all on the down low, and meant to be kept that way. Facebook is trying to find out how much power they have, so that they know the extent of what they can do. The question is, why?

I’m sure some of you have heard of this chat exchange between Mark Zuckerberg and a friend soon after Facebook was invented and was gaining popularity. Those that haven’t, should. Here’s how it went:

Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Mark Zuckerberg: Just ask

Mark Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Mark Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.

Mark Zuckerberg: I don’t know why.

Mark Zuckerberg: They “trust me”

(He then went on to call these Facebook users a not very nice word.)

This is the person who runs the site that holds all your personal information. One that effects your mood, and is not afraid to abuse this power. And on top of that has a record of your face logged into its facial recognition software. So knowing all this, when Facebook decided to lie to my face, I closed the book on it. Never will I willingly and knowingly support such a business.

It’s been very freeing, honestly, not having to check my Facebook, or feeling the need to waste time scrolling through the News Feed. I’ve been using Twitter, which is great for the most part, but there’s been talk that they might switch to an algorithm based feed. If they do, I’m out. I’m not doing that again.

~Toby

So now I’m on WordPress

I finally took the advice of literally everyone I’ve ever talked to on the subject and moved from Blogger to WordPress.

You can find my old blog here.

I might move some of my favorite posts over just to keep everything organized, but we’ll see. I post every Monday, unless I forget. Be there. If you want to.