Curate your own newspaper with RSS

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Political Fictions (2001)

I'm happy it survives. But its existence increasingly feels like anomaly.

The methods have changed. The cruel essence remains.

This is kind of a film review but also just a rant.

Please make your own website!

It's been updated.

Some notes about two films: One earnest, one cynical.

Some lessons learned.

Kindly shut the fuck up.

To succeed in this industry, first delete your higher cortical functions.

I know there's a lot going on but there always is.

It's Robert Redford's fault.

Anyone, as long as they don't work at Politico.

A review of Do a Powerbomb! by Daniel Warren Johnson.

A few notes on writing good.

I'm not sure it's possible to come up with a worse idea.

It's pointless. I love it and can't live without it.

Political Fictions (2001)

It's difficult to articulate what gets lost.

On the unforgiving economics of making comics—and cartoonists’ efforts to change them—in the wake of #ComicsBrokeMe

But criticism is alive? Maybe?

Someone please let me know.

Gilding the White House. Wishcasting Trump's death.

He's a conservative intellectual trapped in an enemies-to-lovers arc with liberalism.

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Python, open source, and the internet

Sites and other stuff I like and that you should too.

News and commentary from the RSS and OPML community.

A personal blog by Front-End Developer Adam Varn

Since launching my new website, I’ve found my way back to using RSS.

A brief story about free and and source operating systems and the power of community along with endless little bits of curiosity to explore.

Maunderings of a Digital Self

Some recent updates and items of interest

Writing online is more accessible than ever. We can maintain …

Python, open source, and the internet

A personal blog by Front-End Developer Adam Varn

The ability of sites to be found on the web has become increasingly difficult with social media platforms penalizing posts that contain links, mountains of AI slop ranking above legitimate sites and Google showing users AI summaries that reword information instead of sending searchers to the originators. The programmer and writer Molly White says

From the digital home of Susan Robertson: sewer, knitter, and reader

The juggernaut is taking advantage of its dominant position to enclose and destroy the commons.

Over at Citation Needed, Molly White has a nice piece on how you can Curate your own newspaper with RSS. If you’re not reading Molly’s work already, you really should, especially if you…

Based on some conversations after my last post, there was some curiosity about how I personally end up using RSS and what seems to work for me. Start with an RSS reader that feels good to you. It’s…

Exactly why Google does not deserve your trust

A personal blog by Front-End Developer Adam Varn

The way we consume content on the internet is increasingly driven by walled-garden platforms and black-box feed algorithms. This shift is making our media diets miserable. Ironically, a solution to the problem predates algorithmic feeds, social media and other forms of informational junk food. It is called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and it is beautiful. What the hell is RSS? RSS is just a format that defines how websites can publish updates (articles, posts, episodes, and so on) in a standard feed that you can subscribe to using an RSS reader (or aggregator). Don’t worry if this sounds extremely uninteresting to you; there aren’t many people that get excited about format specifications; the beauty of RSS is in its simplicity. Any content management system or blog platform supports RSS out of the box, and often enables it by default. As a result, a large portion of the content on the internet is available to you in feeds that you can tap into. But this time, you’re in full control of what you’re receiving, and the feeds are purely reverse chronological bliss. Coincidentally, you might already be using RSS without even knowing, because the whole podcasting world runs on RSS.