How to have the most productive Mondays ever?

Just start a newsletter that announces in its name to the whole world that it will go out every Monday: https://jatan.space/tag/moon-monday 🌝

Newsletter for friends #03: Stuff from August & September

Hello friends, Here’s another web letter of notable things I’ve been up to or enjoyed recently. A lot has happened over the last two months, and below are slices from both the spacey and non-spacey parts of my life. Reading * Why research paper DOIs don’t work sometimes

Rules to effectively use social media

* Be outraged about everything * Be woke across all of time * Never bring nuance * Signal disapproval, or you might just cause an existential crisis for many * Get called out for not flicking your fingers in ways prescribed by stranger collectives * Torch your long-built reputation in no time * Do it all in

You can now follow my articles on Flipboard, Mastodon and Bluesky

I’m now auto-sharing articles and blog posts from my space blog and Journal J on some non-questionable open social networks that also federate (interoperate): MastodonFlipboardBluesky Follow wherever you like. For a better reading experience, directly subscribe to my blogs via email or RSS. PS: Since both my blogs are

LinkedIn Newsletters are spam and a scam

Many people have been suggesting me to start a “LinkedIn Newsletter” for my space articles specifically because it will tap into my existing connections and their networks on the platform. After much reluctance against joining yet another siloed service, I thought perhaps it doesn’t hurt to give it a

A focused phone experience with Archaic Intelligence

I’m sharing with you the simple process I used to customize my phone such that in terms of incentives, it’s now easier to do the things that are good for me versus the things that are better off accessed with some friction. For any kind of serious work,

Newsletter for friends #02: Stuff from mostly July

Hello friends, Thank you for your great response to my first newsletter for friends! Continuing to embrace a calmer digital life against the slurp of social media, I’m sharing with you another web letter of notable things I’ve been up to or enjoyed circa July. Reading * The moving

How to have sustainable conferences

* Complain about disposable cutlery and water bottles * Fly Business class in domestic flights * Spend the whole day at the conference venue but sleep only at 5-star hotels * Do not have virtual participation, and then give out grants to 1% of attendees * Give talks so public-safe they could’ve been a

What will make me take LinkedIn seriously

You know how LinkedIn shows where we work and what our position there is below our names on every post we make? What it should show instead is whose stock we own, who has contracted our company’s work, and which activities we fund in order of their magnitude and

Newsletter for friends #01: Things and thoughts from May & June

To human readers of my personal blog, Today I’m starting this little monthly newsletter for my friends on the Web, further embracing my foray into living a simple digital life. In part inspired by Philip Thomas, it’s a calmer way to stay in touch against the slurp of

Life update: I’ve moved to Bengaluru

This week I moved from Mumbai, the city where I was born and grew up, to Bengaluru. I like many things about Mumbai but I’ve longed to live in Bengaluru for a while now, and below are the major reasons why. * Bengaluru is the space hub of India. Majority

A few thoughts on Threads joining the Fediverse

It actually happened. Meta’s social networking app Threads joined the Fediverse! And I have a few thoughts. 1. This is a big deal. For the first time in history, you can not have an account on a Meta-owned app but still be able to follow and soon interact with

Social Networks

Mastodon and the Fediverse is too noisy. Why?

Mastodon and most Fediverse platforms may be better than traditional social networks at interoperability but they don’t do much about other issues. In fact, they largely copy these issues straight from the social media giants. Most Fediverse platforms, including Mastodon, publicly display follower counts, like (favorite) counts, and share

Social Networks

Tired of social networks? Here’s why you should be Fediverse curious

Many of us are familiar with the feeling of investing time and effort on a particular social network, only to either see it become irrelevant over time or do something stupid or malicious that scatters people over to half a dozen platforms. And so you start over, with all your

The Web

Life update: Embracing a simple but effective digital life

In today’s Web, being online seldom means being present. Browsing doesn’t mean reading. Following hardly means connecting. Posting certainly doesn’t mean articulating. Commenting rarely means conversing. Listening doesn’t mean comprehending. Watching never meant absorbing. And likes don’t mean anything anyway. We largely live an internet

Reading

The one app to read them all already exists, and it’s called RSS

RSS, or Rich Site Summary, is a website reading technology nearly as old as the consumer Web itself. And yet it can keep you on top of news and perspectives in ways social networks can’t. How it works is really simple yet smart: 1. Blogs and websites publish an

Apps

In praise of Bear

I’m impressed by the Bear app’s ability to import and export an exceptionally wide range of file formats compared to the 20+ note-taking apps I looked into. Last year I was on a quest to find an app that can reliably import entire blog archives as well as

Fediverse

Fascinating concepts in the Fediverse

The ongoing drama concerning Ryan Barrett’s upcoming tool that will bridge parts of the social networks Mastodon and Bluesky led me to a rabbit hole. A reading dive into the norms and expectations that factions of people and communities have within the decentralized social Web, which currently mostly exists

Podcasts

People on podcasts versus articulate articles

I rarely listen to podcasts. They are hard to discover in web and app searches. Articles are much easier to find, even good ones. There are four more aspects where I find podcasts to be lacking against articles. Links: Podcasts typically don’t provide sources for whenever guests or hosts

Poems

Poem: For every child

Here’s a little poem I wrote for one of my close friends a few years ago when he had embarked upon a new journey in his teaching ambitions. For every child that dares to dream and every spark of curiosity within For their bold endeavors in jest and that

The Web

Why are we living an internet without intent?

The “modern” Web, especially when served via our phones and social media, makes it too easy to live without intent. Hour after hour. Days at a time. Cumulatively months even. Maybe for years. While most of us have a job, family, and friends, how much of our daily time and

Life

A slice of Hyderabad’s history

I had one day to spare in Hyderabad so I decided to visit some historical places of interest. My similar day out in Indore recently was fun, and so a similar plan sounded like a good idea. I first went to Charminar, natch. As a structure built in ~1590, it’

Life

A day out in Indore

I went on a round-the-city, day-long tour of Indore that was fun to see executed almost exactly as I had planned. I first visited the Central Museum, which hosts unique Paleolithic tools natively excavated from Madhya Pradesh. In the same vein, the museum hosts artifacts of an independent Bronze age

Social Networks

Is instant publishing and reach incompatible with stopping misinformation?

I wish the press took fact checking a bit more seriously. When major events of any kind take place, media publications at large jump the gun to break out any info that seems remotely publishable. They spurt out instant takes and hammered quotes to grab more views, and thus ultimately