š¤ Mitch's newsletter
Why Do We Expect Ancient Romans to Have British Accents in Movies?
Google Is Building an A.I. Fence Around the Internet It Once Championed. As Google incorporates more artificial intelligence into search, people are spending more time on Google. Website operators are crying foul.
āI Donāt Know How You Can Look at Minneapolis and Say They Are Better for Choosing Reform Over Revolutionā. Hamilton Nolan interviews journalist Justin Ellis, author of the book āThe Cruelty of Nice Folks,ā about Minneapolis, the failures of white liberalism, and defunding the police.
The US government is targeting an Atlanta political protester over use of a privacy-protecting phone operating system
āThe US Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute an Atlanta resident in connection with the movement against the police training center known as Cop City because he had GrapheneOS on his phone, an open-source operating system that enables users to enter a passcode and wipe a phone clean,ā writes Timothy Pratt at The Guardian.
GrapheneOS uses a feature called a āduress password.ā If police demand the password to your phone, you give them the duress password instead and it wipes the phone clean.
When Tunick arrived in Atlanta, agents questioned him about child sexual abuse images. āTunick asked four times during the interrogation to speak with a lawyer, but was rebuffed each time, according to courtroom testimony. Additionally, the agents produced no warrant and did not read Tunick his rights.ā
London Gatwick introduces robotic parking service. Autonomous robots park your car while you head to the terminal with your keys.
Cory Doctorow: How to Do Everything (Lifehacking Considered Harmful)
Writing in 2017 about the perils of self-optimization:
The past 14 years have regularly featured junctures where I had to get rid of something I liked doing so I could do something I liked doing more. Some of that was low-hanging fruit (I havenāt watched TV regularly in more than a decade), but after getting rid of the empty calories in my activity diet, I had to start making hard choices.
ā¦
Some of these choices were tough. I have all but given up on re-reading books, despite the undeniable pleasure and value to understanding the authorsā craft, which is easier to unpick on subsequent readings. But I have more than 20 linear feet of books Iāve promised to read for blurbs and reviews, and reading those books _also _teaches me something about the craft, _also _brings me pleasure, _also _makes me a better reviewer, and also makes me a better citizen of science fiction, who contributes to the success of worthy new books.
I am rediscovering the pleasures of re-reading books.
Some social media tools ā like Facebook ā make for fun (if problematic) socializing, and all social media pays some dividend to authors who are hoping to sell books and activists who are hoping to win support, but Twitter also teaches me to be a better writer by making me think about brevity and sentence structure in very rigorous ways (and from an activist perspective, Twitter is a better choice because it, unlike Facebook, doesnāt want the web to die and be replaced by its walled garden) ā so Twitter is in, and Facebook is out.
This essay has got me thinking about opportunity costs, particularly regarding social media.
My social media philosophy nowadays
This post by Manton Reece makes me want to focus my online activity on my blog at mitchwagner.com and the associated daily newsletter. āBlogging is the backbone of the open web,ā Manton says. This post by Cory Doctorow reenforces the point, though itās only peripherally about social media. Cory is mainly talking about opportunity costs. If youāre doing one thing, youāre not doing something else.
Nonetheless, Iām active on a variety of other social platforms, because thatās where people are.
I struggle with Facebook. On the one hand, itās where most of my friends and family are. On the other hand, Meta is toxic and the software is unpleasant to use. I know from experience that if you ask people to follow you on another platform, mostly they donāt. So Iām not leaving Facebook anytime soon, though I want to. Hereās my Facebook page
I like Mastodon. I see a variety of topics and my account is on an instance that supports up to 2,000+ characters, which is a limit I can live with. Here I am on Mastodon.
Iām losing interest in Bluesky. My feed seems to be all politics, all the time. Also, chopping posts into 300-character chunks seems like useless busywork. Here I am on Bluesky
I like Tumblr, but it seems to be in decline. I donāt think Automattic, the current owners, will shut it down soon; I think the CEO has a personal interest. But theyāre not investing in it anymore and it shows. Here I am on Tumblr
Threads is surprisingly enjoyable. I read, but donāt post there. I want to reduce the number of social media platforms Iām active on. If I start posting to Threads and get likes and responses, Iād be more likely to feel hooked.
I was losing interest in Twitter even before Elon bought it. I canceled my account a few months later, as a political gesture. I reactivated later because I occasionally want to check posts that require a login. During the interim, I lost all my followers. Thatās fine ā I have no interest in becoming active on Twitter again. Iād like to reduce the number of social platforms Iām active on, and Twitter seems like an easy one to stay away from.
I like Reddit but posting there is a pain. A large percentage of my posts get deleted by moderators for reasons that seem silly to me. So I donāt bother posting much. Reddit seems like a platform I could cut from my daily use.
Iām also on LinkedIn, professionally. Here I am on LinkedIn
š¦ Mitchellaneous 7.26.2026
