A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).
READ
“New Zealand citizens are leaving the country in record numbers. Between July 2024-2025, 73,400 New Zealanders left, compared with 25,800 returning home to live, according to Stats NZ. In January, the government relaxed its visitor visa rules to attract so-called “digital nomads”– people who work remotely while travelling – to work in New Zealand. The visa extends to influencers, as long as they are being paid by an overseas company.”
New Zealand loosens residency restrictions as record number of citizens leave | New Zealand | The Guardian
“Research from Friends of the Earth Cymru has found that at least 45,000 sites across Wales could be contaminated with toxic waste but have never been adequately inspected, leaving communities and wildlife vulnerable to a potential environmental crisis. Despite Wales’s extensive industrial history, Tuesday’s publication found that due to a lack of funding and oversight, only 82 sites across the country have ever been fully examined and classified as contaminated, meaning the actual scale of the threat is unknown.”
At least 45,000 sites in Wales could be contaminated with toxic waste, study says | Wales | The Guardian
“All RSS had to do to weather ICE, Twitter, AI, and whatever comes next, was keep things simple and let users build their own feeds, filters, lists, and aggregators. Like email, it probably won’t make anyone a billion dollars or reshape entire industries. But it will always be wholly yours. And if that isn’t nice I don’t know what is.”
The story of how RSS beat Microsoft
“In this new degraded world, we will see these six behavior patterns from everybody, even (or especially) those who under other circumstances would be well integrated into their communities:
– Skepticism: If events can’t be validated, I can’t give credence to anything.
– Aloofness: If everything gets called into question, I have no basis for shared communal actions.
– Silence: If discussion no longer resolves anything, I have no purpose in speaking.
– Indifference: As I lose connection with people and events, I lose interest in them.
– Distrust: In a world without shared reality, no expert or institution can earn my total trust.
– Hostility: As these traditional connections break down, it doesn’t take much to set off conflicts and violence.
We are already starting to see these warning signs. But the worst is yet to come. And it’s coming quickly—the technology for fakery and deception gets better each month.”
Our Shared Reality Will Self-Destruct in the Next 12 Months
“Social media as we know it is dying, but we’re not condemned to its ruins. We are capable of building better — smaller, slower, more intentional, more accountable — spaces for digital interaction, spaces where the metrics that matter aren’t engagement and growth but understanding and connection, where algorithms serve the community rather than strip-mining it. The last days of social media might be the first days of something more human: a web that remembers why we came online in the first place — not to be harvested but to be heard, not to go viral but to find our people, not to scroll but to connect. We built these systems, and we can certainly build better ones. The question is whether we will do this or whether we will continue to drown.”
The Last Days Of Social Media
“Today, I look at my invention and I am forced to ask: is the web still free today? No, not all of it. We see a handful of large platforms harvesting users’ private data to share with commercial brokers or even repressive governments. We see ubiquitous algorithms that are addictive by design and damaging to our teenagers’ mental health. Trading personal data for use certainly does not fit with my vision for a free web. On many platforms, we are no longer the customers, but instead have become the product. Our data, even if anonymised, is sold on to actors we never intended it to reach, who can then target us with content and advertising. This includes deliberately harmful content that leads to real-world violence, spreads misinformation, wreaks havoc on our psychological wellbeing and seeks to undermine social cohesion.”
Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Technology | The Guardian
WATCH
EXPLORE
A daily archive of newspaper frontpages via Paperstack.
Discover Tasmania in 360° is a personal project of two humans which explores the ‘stunning lookouts, lakes & hidden gems’ of Tasmania.
Imagine a site in which ambient music is overlaid with old school answering machine messages… well now it’s here in the form of the ListenMachine.
What a delight to explore the Classic Mac OS System 1 Patterns all in one place, available to play with and download in many permutations for free (thanks to Paul Adam Smith).