What the Fran

Links: Crime and creativity

A lot of the links recently have been very creative. Also, crimes in the form of bots.

I'm sure we've all read Herman's post, Aggressive bots ruined my weekend. All his hard work and diligence protecting us from the onslaught of bad bottery.

Nearly Right's Personal blogging now requires bank-grade security as bot traffic saturates the internet:

The tragedy isn't technical. It's that we've built a web where maintaining good spaces requires fighting wars nobody should have to wage just to share words on the internet.

Also from Nearly Right, Programmers reinvent 1970s concepts because nobody teaches computing history. Every discipline ought to have a History of Thing.

Some useful tools and ideas from Gobino on protecting your email identity. Reminds me to get back on sorting out my email.

Referencing the Bear outage, bots, and the like, Self-hosting is a non-starter from Bix.

This is also going under crimes: Trying to Self-Host FOSS Software Once Again Makes Me Really Fucking Angry from Anarchae:

If software developers actually, genuinely want people who are not other software developers to use FOSS they are going to have to do better. If you don't want to provide support or accept issues from regular non-developer users then just say that right at the top. Stop wasting my time.

To the creativity!

Ultimate creative dude: Leonardo da Vinci. The Codex Atlanticus is available to browse through.

Thomas Hirschhorn's Workshop “Energy: Yes! Quality: No!” via Rough Copy's What you are wired for.

Energy is what counts, Energy is what I can grasp, Energy is what I can share and Energy is what is Universal. “Energy: Yes!” is a statement for movement, for the dynamic, for invention, for activity, for the activity of thinking.

Zest. Gusto. As Ray Bradbury said.

I read the golem book, now the author has written an article on Lady Golem and the Lady Knight: Medieval Revival, Romance, and Resistance.

Aeon's Monstrification: 'For centuries we’ve used the declaration of ‘monster’ to eject individuals and groups from being respected as fully human.'

Developing my silver linings playbook has some really inspiring things to say about being the change you want to see in the world, a gift economy, building community, and more, in Daily Me's manifesto.

Evan Forry's So Indie Publishing Is Dead is a bit of a manifesto about curation:

I want to read good books. I want to write good books and have other people read them. So, when I read good things, I want to share them with you. They won't always be things you like, we're different people. They won't always be independent books. They won't always be books. But, when I find something I really like, I want to share it with you so that you have a greater chance of finding something you'll enjoy.

Luke Davis has a list of Inspiring creatives for 2025. Such a great idea, I might have to do one.

Stop buying Things zine is colourful and provoking.

I really like the idea of Sarah Joy's work log collages. A creative way of logging. Something a bit special.

Finding my community by Tim B at Congas.blog. (The seventieth blog on my list of ttrpgs on Bear.) The post is about games but the concept and the Matt Colville video, Community, it links to are applicable to anything really, anything creative certainly.

The Internet Is Cool Actually from Robb Knight, highlighting some cool internet stuffs. Similarly, Niche corners of the internet to explore when you feel uninspired has lots of art and design inspiration and so on.

Now, most of the following are not new to the web, to me, and probably not to you, but I have been looking at people using the web in fun, creative ways.

Please do get in touch with suggestions for blogs and things for me to read.

#links