JANUARY 2025 BULLETIN

A year is a long period of time. During January, I've spent time calibrating my vigor and contemplating how I can develop myself personally, professionally, and align myself more with my principles. I've been feeling a slump of sorts, lamenting various complexities of my personal and professional life. I have felt comfortable with my efforts to not be in the pocket of billionaires and to be skeptical of convenience and naturally find myself thinking what more I can do to become the best version of me on a given day.

I have grown tired of every nexus of social media becoming an advertisement space and business marketplace while claiming to decentralise internet access. I've overlooked the intellectual trap resulting from the convenience of not knowing how to make my own website. I find the anti-sociality of the average user totally mired by accepting the behaviour of Personal Brand accounts who are only looking for oafish customers to pay a subscription fee for their cult of personality. Social media is a useful tool absolutely rinsed by blathering fools. The Wendy's brand account was a genuine turning point for what constitutes acceptable online behaviour for the masses.

I deactivated Twitter long after it felt fully out of sight from its transformation to X, too long after Elon's takeover, as obliging my account be used to feed Grok was the final straw. I deleted my Instagram & Facebook, which I rarely used and felt little qualms deleting. I canceled my Discord subscription because I'd rather find places to hang out in IRC or just get on doing something else at any given time. I've canceled my only music streaming subscription: SoundCloud, because I want to engage more critically with the music and connect with appreciative people within the culture. I started streaming on Twitch a few months ago and I'm brainstorming ways to re-engage the right people in the right environment without it. I deactivated my Microsoft 365 subscription and would like to move towards the Linux operating system when I sort the logistics. 

I aim to move my email and blog away from Google services as soon as possible. I intend to design my own web 1.0 style page which will take quite a bit of learning and effort, but, I plan to share what I learn and how I interpret my learnings so that it may inspire anyone else to learn or exchange their own knowledge and perspective. I'm planning to make something lightweight and legible without any flair. It will of course be to my own taste but that also means it will have low bandwidth requirements.

At some point, this blog will stop looking as it does and no longer use the weedcatholic dotcom domain. I'd like to share text, audio, and video as recordings or live streams that require opting to load and won't display automatically. This will take quite a bit of learning, but I'm just going to shoot for the moon while I'm dreaming up a plan. 

This year, I think my most important resolution is to make no compromises on the value of my privacy. Gmail is free, but another private host can cost mere dollars. Another moonshot from my daydreaming is to learn how to run a mail server. It takes a lot of steps and learning, but the possibilities of knowing how to set up, run, and maintain digital mail really make me eyes wide. I think learning network security is an important asset for the time. More than ever, these things are easier to learn because of the plethora of information. I've received compliments that I'm a good teacher and I want to take that seriously. I hope to provide concise knowledge free from the bloat of modern Internet convention.

So, after having minimised my accounts and subscriptions for technology and services, my first goal is to quit Gmail. I will most likely find an email host that will accept my domain as my first step to achieve this inspired, eventual goal to run my own email server. I will be sharing my research and decision regarding the mail services if you'd like to leave free email behind.