Links I’d share in private #19

Welcome to another edition of Links I’d share in private, a (bi-)weekly blog post about all the things and content I come across the Internet during my intense web binging, worthy of being shared to you all (instead of in all of my private group chats 🤣).

Grey November

November 2024 has been a pretty grey and bleh month this year, urgh. Tons of people around me are settling into depression, and the general mood since the American elections has just been pretty grim and dark. People are feeling like we are slipping into dark time ahead, and not a lot of people feel optimistic about our futures. I’m having a harder time cheering up my own teenager, whom is suffering from tons of general anxiety and ecoanxiety towards their future, too. Those are not easy times.

On another note, the Maison des Chatons is settling in with the newest addition to the household. Bela, my latest kitten, is close to being 6 months old, and he’s such a floofball and cuddly one. Buffy is still having a hard time adjusting to him, being a bully and terrorizing him into hiding when he sees her nearby. I just can’t wait for him to become as big as Buffy, and to start fighting back for his place in the house, and to stop being terrorized by her. Otherwise, the other two, Chichi and Puce, has pretty much adopted him, and they sleep together on my bed from time to time. I love it!

The end of 2024 is coming to an end, and I can’t wait for the Holidays vacations coming soon. Just lounging on my sofa, reading and watching TV for days with a nice little Chardonnay in hand will be pretty relaxing. That being said, I am also planning to do some activities with my kid, maybe some museum exhibition or two could be fun. What are your recommendation for a very blasé teenager that is in a phase of blah?

On that note, I hope 2024 ends well, and that December get some snow. I’m tired of this grey depressive mood, and I just want my snow already!

Now on with the Links I’d share in private part!

Keywords: This week’s Links I’d share in private touches on various topics, including: Friendship challenges, life lessons (gratitude, simplicity, growth), digital gardens (creativity, collaboration), tech interviews, Indigenous web design, coffee photos, Antarctic stats, oceanic photography, nature-inspired costumes, Japanese soul music (1970s), recipes (Mac n Cheese, Teriyaki Salmon, Madeira Cortado), cyber fonts, tape nostalgia, social media trends (2024), community building, GDPR-focused tools.

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TO READ

• The Trouble with Friends – The wonder, and the curse, of friendship is choice: a sober look on friendship, adulthood, and loneliness as we grow older, of the difficulties of keeping our friends. “What my students say: Friendship is a gift, a sacrifice. Friendship is all about timing and who you are at that moment and what you need.”
• Our Readers Share Their Most Surprising Life Lessons: the article compiles surprising life lessons shared by readers of The Good Trade, focusing on themes of self-discovery, gratitude, and embracing imperfections. It also highlights stories of personal growth, the power of simplicity, and the importance of nurturing meaningful connections, emphasizing how small, intentional changes can lead to profound happiness.
• A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden: I kinda like the concept of a Digital Garden to grow our thoughts and creativity in our online spaces. The article talks about the concept and evolution of “digital gardens,” highlighting their ethos as dynamic, non-linear spaces for cultivating ideas. Unlike traditional blogs, digital gardens focus on iterative growth, encouraging curiosity and creativity. The author traces its roots in hypertext, personal knowledge systems, and online communities, emphasizing its value as tools for learning, collaboration, and creating rich knowledge networks.
• Uses this: I’ve stumbled upon this website that have tons of interviews (a 1000+!) with people who talks about their hardware and software programs, the usage of technology they do, and a little about themselves. I really love to learn what people use on my their computers, and can easily spend an hour on that website!

TO SEE

• David Thomas – No, Seriously, F**k Engagement: Building a More Human Web: from the description: “How might engagement, or our definition of it, perpetuate the very systems of oppression we dreamed the web might end? What if entering into a dialogue with Indigenous design could allow us to imagine a web that cares about people more than it cares about money? These are big swings, but it’s about time we took them.” What a very interesting talk to listen to! I kinda agree with this take, our social web has become enshittified for engagements tactics, making it hard to just follow your friends’ feed and life updates and all. Everything is ad, engagement with polemical content to make you react, and disinformation. It’s terrible.

• Coffee: totally useless, but definitively addictive, this website is a collection of coffee pictures taken everyday by this website owner.
• Onge is a very ascii-styled yet simple website portfolio for this artist, that brought me to another interesting website, AntarticaStat.us, where all the stations in Antartica are shown with their current stats and weather infos.
• Another fantastic Yearly Oceanic Photography Competition, this time on the theme of the Ocean (which I have a phobia AND a fascination!). The pictures are just breathtaking!

TO FOLLOW

• Well this is interesting: Olana Light, an artist that create costumes that looks like nature and that are bluffing with their environment. Simply amazing!

TO HEAR

• This Japanese Soul from the ’70s: ライトメロウ with Kengo on YouTube is simply fantastic. Japanese soul music from the 1970s. And the DJ’s decor… WOW! I love it!

RECIPES

• I’m a sucker for a good Mac n Cheese recipe, especially in a skillet
• A nice Teriyaki Salmon Bowl in a Rice Cooker
• Things I Learned: A Cortado in Madeira is NOT an espresso with milk, but a combination of toasted barley “coffee,” actual coffee, sweet Madeira wine, sugar and a lemon peel, served hot.

DESIGN

• Departure Mono: a nice lo-tech cyber styled font, free to download, for your design needs.
• Tapedeck.org: a collection of tape photos, giving us a nostalgia of when music was physical.

TECH & WEB

• OUTSIDERS social signals 2024_v5: while this 234-slides may seem long, it reads quite fast. A nice interesting overview of social medias in 2024, this guide provides a comprehensive overview of current social media trends, content strategies, and marketing insights. It’s an invaluable resource for anyone looking to develop a robust social marketing strategy for 2025. The doc offers practical principles and actionable insights that can help transform a blank strategic plan into a well-informed, forward-thinking marketing approach. To read with attention.
• Introduction to Community Development: a very thorough guide that gives insightful tips and advices on how to start your online community for your specific topics and hobbies.
• kSuite: if you want a suite that can replace Google Workspace, with a focus on GDPR, and from Europe (Switzerland, to be exact), than look no further than here. kSuite is the ethical collaborative solution that increase your productivity with a 100% Swiss solution that brings together all the apps for teamwork.