Keeping Up with the Internet

I'm weird in how I use the internet. I avoid most algorithmic feeds, and instead have curated a system of bookmarks, RSS feeds, and "this isn't a feed but I want it to be" kludges to keep up with my various sources. So let's get weird.

Yes, I did name my RSS feed with an LOTR reference

RSS

I was (at best) vaguely aware of "Really Simple Syndication" during its heyday; instead Cory Doctorow got me interested in it a couple years ago (in an article like this one) and I started learning more. Websites with an RSS feed have a simple webpage with a machine-readable list of recent updates and their dates, titles, and summaries or full text. RSS readers can query that list for every webpage they follow and provide the user (me!) with every article or update from every website that the user follows in whatever order they want. This is extremely helpful for pages that don't post on a regular schedule because it means that I get notified when they do update without having to check the page obsessively. As an aside, RSS is also the back-end of every podcast: podcast apps simply read the RSS page for the podcast which includes the description and a link to the audio file.

The heyday of RSS was the heyday of Google Reader: 2005-2013. A decade later, people still mourn its departure. It was a social network in a completely different way than Facebook, etc. users controlled their own feeds and could share and view them with others. Because it was completely different than Facebook (and hard to monetize), Reader was eventually shut down in favor of Google+...which never went anywhere because it was Facebook without being Facebook. I never used Reader, and when I started thinking about RSS, I wasn't happy with any of the iPhone options I found because I didn't want yet another account with yet another set of Terms and Conditions. Eventually I stumbled across an article that noted that the iPhone had a "Shortcuts" app that could be cudgeled into being a homebrew RSS reader. Success!

I use RSS for blogs and other sites that update on odd schedules, like some webcomics. My RSS shortcut is one of the icons I click on when I want to read something on my phone, so it's pre-curated towards things that I like. The Shortcut pulls the most-recent updates from every blog, etc. that I listed and then sorts them by most-recent and cuts off everything more than 7 days old. I tap the icon, let it chug for several seconds (because Shortcuts are SLOW), and then review the list and click on what I want to read. I have a similar Shortcut that I use just for weather (using weather.gov) and air quality (airnow.gov) as part of my daily "what's outside like today?" check.

I love this setup because I control it and it constantly feeds me great writers making fun posts.

Bluesky/Twitter

I started following Twitter in the late 2010s because of the feed on Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary website. I'd see amusing things often enough that I figured out how to bookmark his "posts and replies" page in my browser, and slowly expanded to a handful of other people to follow. I didn't set up an account, I just used the web interface. I did fall down a few rabbit holes on highly-discussed threads, but I also found delights like a thread about auditory processing disorders which made me buy a pair of earplugs to wear in loud restaurants and made me a much happier person, or Chuck Wendig's and Sam Syke's improvised horror-comedy-thread-turned-film "You Might be the Killer".

With the destruction of Twitter/X, my people mostly moved to Bluesky. I've now got their author pages bookmarked and I review them the same as before, but Bluesky does not have the "posts and replies" option, so I miss when they engage with someone else; it's a less-varied experience. I've done some digging around and haven't found a solution to this, but if you know how to see the posts and replies by an author on Bluesky, please let me know! Even if it's a "send this query to the API" answer, that'd be really helpful too. Because Twitter no longer shows threads in logged-out browsers, I've been using XCancel instead.

My current rotation is two Bluesky pages, one Twitter/XCancel page, and one Mastodon page. When a Bluesky post is blocked (because it's only available to signed-in users), I use Skyview.

Browser Tricks

The rest of my typical internet diet comes from bookmarks on my browser and Firefox tab groups. I have about a dozen bookmarks that I check each morning (mostly comics with very regular schedules plus The Economist's daily news brief) on the home page of my phone's browser, so they're easy to access and zip through. The various sites that I check through RSS, Bluesky/Twitter, etc. are also bookmarked if I want to check them without the full RSS run.

As I've been job-hunting, I've also started using saved tab groups in Firefox. The main one is my "No job alert" tab, which is for companies that don't offer satisfactory job-alert emails. On my job-hunt days I can open the tabs, cycle through all of them to check for new postings, and then close the tab group again without fearing that I'll forget a company on my next run. This group also includes some custom LinkedIn searches and other job-hunting sites.

Other Weirdness

My oldest child just started kindergarten, which means that the school recommends a ton of apps to download and agree to terms for. I try to at least use a browser rather than an app and been somewhat successful. One annoying item was a recommendation that we download the school's smartphone app to read their news updates. I saw a "live feed" on the school website, so I thought, "I'll just subscribe to the RSS feed instead!" That was silly: the system the school uses doesn't provide an RSS feed, but does simultaneously upload to Facebook, Twitter, etc. Instead, I ended up writing a Google Apps Script / Javascript scheduled task that would read the live feed (after I found the JSON object the feed is based on) and email me daily with a digest. Anything that people post exclusively on Facebook I have to rely on my wife to catch. But I didn't have to download the app!

Conclusion

I didn't list other social media here because I barely use them: I'm on LinkedIn the most now because I'm job-hunting, and I've started playing with Discord's text channels, but I'm not active on Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, Tiktok, or whatever the kids are using these days. I'll admit that I still have nostalgia for the forums and BBS bulletin-boards of yesteryear, but what I've pulled together works for me now. Happy browsing!