Author: SekhmetDesign

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Vacances estivales: Yéééé! Anxiété de vacances: Pas Yé!

Les vacances commencent aujourd’hui pour moi (2 semaines, yéééééééé!), et l’anxiété se pointe le bout du nez (pas yé)

Je serai honnête : c’est la première fois en 13 ans que j’ai deux semaines de vacances l’été. Deux semaines ! Ce n’est pas rien ! Mais par le passé, j’ai toujours culpabilisé si je prenais une semaine : j’avais pris l’habitude de prendre plutôt des longs weekends de vacances durant l’été à la place, incapable de vraiment bien déconnecter à cause de mon anxiété qui me prenait au ventre… Trop de situations/mauvaises surprises me sont arrivés au courant des dernières années pour que j’aille pu profiter pleinement de mes vacances pour me déconnecter: il y avait toujours une urgence, ou une situation un peu merdique qui arrivait avant ou durant mes vacances, annulant ainsi l’effet “reposant” que mes vacances devaient avoir…

Cette année, pour la 1ʳᵉ fois en 13 ans, oui, j’ai une ‘tite anxiété en partant en vacances, mais… je me sens en sécurité. Je me sens en confiance de pouvoir profiter de mon deux semaines la tête légère, sans trop de tracas. C’est un sentiment bizarre, mais oh combien bienvenu ! Se sentir capable de pouvoir déconnecter un peu… le rêve !

Alors, je vous souhaite à tous de bonnes vacances ! Ceux qui les ont dans les prochaines jours/semaines, essayez de déconnecter du travail un peu. C’est bon pour notre santé mentale !

#mentalhealth #santémentale #vacances #vacations #summer #été #conciliationTravailFamille #relax

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Links I’d share in private #10

10! Already 10 of these types of posts, where I share what I encounter online during my readings and watching! Lots of content, as usual, to share this week! The hot weather here in Montreal doesn’t stop me from writing online 🙂

Keywords: Decentralized systems and IndieWeb; Generative AI; AI bots scraping; Fonts; beautiful website and kitchen design; Instagram accounts with beautiful pictures to follow; Femininity and gender roles in sport world; Community; Dystopian; Shareholder supremacy; Midwestern life.

TO READ

  • The unified theory of fucks
  • The expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI: The Internet is increasingly getting spammed by AI content, and it’s getting difficult to find original content and authentic connections online. Large language models (LLMs) are becoming more sophisticated, and soon they will be able to generate indistinguishable human-written content. This will make it harder to verify if someone online is a real person. The author also suggests several ways to prove your humanity, including referencing obscure knowledge, using creative language, and meeting people in real life. “Assumed Audience [of the text]: People who have heard of GPT-3 / ChatGPT, and are vaguely following the advances in machine learning, large language models, and image generators. Also people who care about making the web a flourishing social and intellectual space.”
  • The IndieWeb for Everyone: “It’s like everyone has spent the last few years in a giant all-inclusive resort, screaming at each other for attention at the buffet. Now we’re moving into nice little bed-and-breakfast places, but we’re complaining because it takes slightly more effort to book a room, and the free WIFI isn’t as fast. Maybe its time to rethink some of these expectations. Maybe we need some of that early internet vibe back and be ok with smaller, closer communities. Maybe we can even get some of the fun back and start exploring again, instead of expecting everything to be automatically delivered to us in real time. We can remind ourselves of what social media used to be: a way to connect around shared interests, talk to friends, and discover new content. No grifts, no viral fame, no drama.”
  • We’ve lost the plot: in this constant bombardment of entertainment in all the screens surrounding us, it has led to several negative consequences. It made us more susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy theories; it made us self-centered and performative, as we strive to be the “main character” of our lives on social medias; and it has desensitized us to real-world tragedies, becoming accustomed to seeing violence and suffering on our screens. Let’s try to be more mindful of our entertainment’s consumption, and remember the importance of distinguishing between fiction and reality. Let’s enjoy the entertainment as it’s supposed to be: a way to expand our understanding of the world rather than to escape from it.
  • Travelling at the speed of the soul: Travelling by foot allows the traveller to connect with the world in a deeper way. And being an avid walker myself, I love stories from other walkers across the World. This one is about the importance of pilgrimage and the act of walking, from an author writing about his journey from London to Istanbul.
  • Another excellent Ed Zitron article: “The Shareholder Supremacy“: on the negative effects of shareholder supremacy on everything: quality of products and services; pleasing to investors instead of customers or employees; and the rise of layoffs and financial engineering.
  • I am pleasing to Everyone: the Netflix documentary series about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders gives an interesting view on the cheerleaders’ rigorous tryout process, and it delves into the cult of femininity surrounding the squad. It is fascinating to watch, highlighting both the allure and the potential harm of the idealized feminine image they embody, showing the pressure on women to conform to societal expectations and the exploitation of workers in the entertainment/sport industries.
  • The American Moms Abroad who are milking it for TikTok: a reminder that yes, it’s great to live in countries where you have social benefits like healthcare and “free” education, but what you see on social medias ain’t the complete picture!
  • Why I think Lincoln, Nebraska is Great: it is good to see folks present their lives in the American Midwest lands. In this case, how Lincoln, Nebraska, has a pretty interesting multicultural food scene coffee shops, and opportunities for activism in a friendly place with a strong sense of community.

TO SEE

  • I’ve been following this YouTuber, Chelsea Callahan, for a while now: a young New Yorker in her thirties just living her life in a vlog format. What I love about Chelsea is just how relatable she is: a young woman trying to live her best realistic life with her cats in a busy metropolis while trying to have fun! She is always open and honest about her mental state, her struggles and her challenges, and I love seeing her evolve into this strong woman.
  • Another YouTuber I like, Solar Camper Car, who lives in his car in a very sustainable way! I really love his charming good soul, his honest take on his lifestyle, and all the knowledge he shares through his travels. These days, he’s in our province, which I love discovering through his eyes! Poor soul went in LAVAL of all places 😂

Quote

As we age, our knowledge and experience garner increased trust from others, unlike when we were younger and felt the need to constantly prove ourselves. By the time we reach middle age, we’ve often become so accustomed to striving for validation that we have difficulty recognizing and embracing our own inherent authority and knowledge. Embrace you: you have everything to make it work.

TO FOLLOW

DESIGN

  • SWISSPOSTERS (also on Threads)
    I’m a sucker for beautifully designed posters with loud graphics!
  • I love Before/After renovation stories. And this Kitchen remodel is simply so gorgeous! I especially love the brick chimney in that blue and grey kitchen! Kinda want to paint my kitchen in blue and grey!
  • Beautiful website of the week: CollectiveOffice, an architecture collective presenting their work in a beautifully crafted website.

RECIPES

CYBERSECURITY

  • I’m seeing more and more pushbacks against AI bots scraping the Internet’s content for free. THis article on Jeremy Keith blog gives an interesting take on this approach, and I’m more and more on the team of poisoning the machine in any ways possible. Or Edit your robots.txt files to block bots from scraping your website!

Tech & Web

  • Font Interceptor is an interesting tool that helps you download all fonts in use on a target website.
  • Your LOL tool/font: Sans Bullshit Sans is an experimental font using the power of ligatures to turn bullshit markteing language into bullshit images.
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Links I’d share in private #9

Been reading a lot more this week, and encountered a lot of interesting articles. And since I was able to write this blog post on my terrasse during the sunny days of June, it was a very pleasant feeling! Enjoying the sun, hearing the birds (we have a Cardinal couple in our backalley! soooooo cute to see them together), sipping my glass of wine as I write down my thoughts… Ahhhhhhhh the Joy of Summer in Montreal!

Keywords: friendship; Chinese philosophy on mental health; anti-woke rhetoric; again on Burnout; Nerd Culture has become toxic; The Age of Average; history of Indigenous relations in Canada; fuck AI (again); lots of interesting quotes and images; RRR; healthy recipes; Moshe Safdie; Passphrases & 2FA; WEb tool of the week; and reflections from a senior Developer on the field.

TO READ

  • An ode to the friends we met in our 20s: My twenties were very formative years when I got to develop into whom I became in terms of person, values and ways of life. I also had the chance to meet amazing folks that became – and still are – close friends involved in my life. This article gives me a moment to appreciate and savour those important friendships. These people are so important to me that we gave it a nickname, the “Macaques” group. If you made it into the Macaque status, you know you’ve entered into the ‘important’ category in my life. “In the midst of it all, we meet wonderful people who inspire us to continue the journey, encourage us to keep seeking answers to all of the questions we have, show us that we are not alone, and walk beside us through some of the most challenging, beautiful, confusing years of our lives.“
  • Chinese philosophy has long known that mental health is communal: the emphasis on self-care and individual ‘healing’ actions in our Western health system has been at the contrary of what Eastern health system have observed throughout their history. “the early Chinese philosophers knew that a healthy mind comes from a harmonious community, not a matter for individuals alone“. It may explain why we (the westerners) have a much harder time getting over our mental health issues, seeing as we don’t have a strong community base compared to other cultures’ communal mentality. I must say that ever since I started being more vocal and “public” about my mental health struggles, and slowly building my “community” (be it online or in person), it really helped me overcome my struggles, It’s not THE solution for everything, but maybe there is a basis of truth in having a community to rely on for overcoming hardship in life…?
  • The Origin of Specious: The roots of “anti-woke” rhetoric, from Richard Hanania’s alt-right screeds to Charles Murray’s bigoted race science: There’s an intense “anti-woke” movement going on (especially in the USA, but it has started here too), led by alt-right groups and people whom have a hate for anything related to accepting other human beings as normal. The article discusses the manipulation and redefinition of critical race theory (CRT) by political figures, particularly those on the right and far right, to advance anti-democratic agendas. It explores how terms like CRT and “woke” have been distorted to create moral panics and justify restrictive policies, highlighting how this tactic is part of a broader strategy to frame progressive movements and policies in a negative light, drawing parallels to past eras of racial and social backlash. By doing so, conservative activists aim to maintain existing power structures and undermine efforts toward racial and social justice.
  • This entire Twitter Thread on Burnout is interesting. It explains the different types of rest needed to overcome burnout in our lives, and give good tips on how to slowly beat burnout out.
  • The age of average: The article explores the increasing trend towards uniformity in design, branding, and consumer products. Murrell writes that modern market pressures and consumer preferences have led to a convergence towards safe, predictable choices, resulting in a homogenized visual and experiential landscape. An interesting demonstration on how everything looks the same…
  • Nerd Culture is murdering intellectuals: In his article, it is argued that the rise of nerd culture, while initially beneficial in popularizing science fiction and fantasy, has led to the decline of high culture, where the success of nerds in economic and cultural realms has created a totalitarian cultural dominance, where intellectual pursuits are overshadowed by mainstream nerdy interests. This prevents people from evolving into true intellectuals, leading to a culture steeped in nostalgia and shallow entertainment rather than profound artistic and intellectual endeavours.
  • This article is from 5 years ago, but it’s still valid. 100 ways to support – not appropriate from – Native People. The trick to help stop racism is to educate yourself on other cultures and ethnicities different from your own roots, and to slowly change, one action at a time.
  • A brief timeline of the history of Indigenous relations in Canada: June is the National Indigenous History month in our country, so I’m sharing you an article about the history of relations among our different nations.
  • I’m not a fan of AI right now, and this article “AI and the End of the Human writer” is pretty much reinforcing my opinion of it. What we lose through LLMs and the next iteration of AI ends up being not so much the outputs, but the journey to get to the outputs, to the ideas. “If a computer can write like a person, what does that say about the nature of our own creativity?“

Quote

Always stop to pet the dog or the cat. You will never regret this choice.

TO SEE

  • The movie RRR: an epic Telugu-language movie of a saga between two revolutionary figures in India’s history, filmed with tons of epic action-sequenced scenes and amazing dance moves. I’m a sucker for Indian movies (Bollywood style, but more and more just Indian style movies), and RRR gave me a thrill for the entire duration of the long film. You can find it on Netflix (or surely somewhere on the Internet… 😉 )
  • A thousand suns, an original scifi anthology short movies, under the thematic of Humanity surviving in harsh places. Currently have 6 episodes, between 3 to 6 minutes each. Beautifully filmed, visually gorgeous, and fascinating short stories that makes me wish for more.

TO FOLLOW

  • Instagram account to follow: Symbolic Magic. This image from their account makes you remember that being rich is not a matter of having money, but being grateful for abundance in Life.
  • Threads account to follow (there are also on Instagram): Girls Messages

TO DO

Try having a “no spend” month. Note everything you have to spend down on paper (or Google Sheets/Excel), and see where you spend your money, and where you can make some cut on spending. I bet those subscriptions fees can be eliminated… (Fuck the subscription model, urgh! Everything now costs money to use, it’s stupid)

RECIPES

DESIGN

  • My Steps and Gardens and Bees: Moshe Safdie recounts his childhood experiences in Haifa (Lebanon), highlighting how the city’s steps and terraces influenced his architectural vision. He describes his fascination with the geometric efficiency of beehives and the lush Bahá’í gardens, which combined to inspire his design philosophy of integrating buildings with nature. These early experiences led him to create structures that harmonize with their surroundings, embodying his belief in “buildings you could climb on, buildings that were gardens, gardens that were buildings.”

CYBERSECURITY

WEB & TECH

  • Useful tool of the week: Paywall Reader. Not everyone has deep pockets full of cash to give away to content creators, and it’s ok. This website will help you view the articles you want to read, and remove the paywall from its website. That being said, if you have a little $ to put on content, prioritize the indie creators.
  • Reflections after 15 years of working as a software/web developer: the article discusses lessons and insights gained over a long career in software development, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning, effective communication, and work-life balance, as well as learning to disconnect. After 25 years in tech for me, I kind of concur with this list.
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Links I’d share in private #8

After a small break, I’m back! Lots to share this week, and tons of links that caught my attention.

Keywords: Kant on Happiness; Burnout; the end of the Internet as we knew it; on Rest; on Women’s health; on toxic workplaces; a feel-good housing story; nice photos; a video about urban development and human scale; a Korean recipe; interesting accounts to follow; lots of tech opinions; a graph JS library; color design.

TO READ

  • The Happiness problem: “The problem with happiness, Kant argued, is that “happiness is such an indeterminate concept that although every human being wishes to attain it, he can never say […] what he really wishes and wills.” This is because all of the elements that we think constitute happiness are empirical and resolutely determinate. All the things we think make us happy — money, health, love — are finite and could always be a bit better. In Kant’s words, we can never hope to “attain the totality of a series of consequences which are in fact infinite.””
  • You can’t fix Burnout with self-care: last fall, among all the health problems I had to resolve, I realized I also had a severe burnout, exhausted from all the stress of life and work, and I just had to take a pause from everything before it became worse. I was lucky enough to be able to take a break, and make changes to my life during that time, but at that moment, I felt quite helpless over everything: the rising cost of living, the gruesome job market being shit, the solitude being quite overbearing, and the health problems completely making it difficult to stay awake and well… it was a pretty intense period which I managed to get out of at the beginning of 2024. This text kinda reflects on the same observations that I came to have over burnout and self-care: that no matter what actions I took to take care of myself, it wasn’t enough. Self-care could not eliminate all the distress and misery that our modern world brought on all of us. “Burnout is not a medical diagnosis, though there’s overlap between burnout and conditions such as depression or anxiety. It’s a response to chronic conditions in which you are overworked and don’t feel like you’re making a difference or progressing. But here’s maybe the most important part that’s come out over the years: these feelings don’t come from you alone.[…] Burnout arises from your interaction with your circumstances and the environment. This is why individual interventions for burnout don’t really work. The solution to burnout is not, as I tried, to make a personal resolution about it. It’s actually to look outward and ask: Why am I experiencing this? What about my job or interactions is leading to this feeling?”
  • Still on the topic of Burnout: the 6 causes of Burnout. Burnout is More than Just Being Tired. “Treating burnout as a purely individual problem, Maslach argues, is like dealing with dying canaries by trying to find more robust birds who will last longer down in the tunnels—it misses the point entirely. Instead of trying to toughen up the canaries, we ought to be working to fix the elements that make our work environment toxic.”
  • Another excellent Ed Zitron text: “Are we watching the Internet die?“ “We’re at the end of a vast, multi-faceted con of internet users, where ultra-rich technologists tricked their customers into building their companies for free. And while the trade once seemed fair, it’s become apparent that these executives see users not as willing participants in some sort of fair exchange, but as veins of data to be exploitatively mined as many times as possible, given nothing in return other than access to a platform that may or may not work properly.”
  • On rest, and its impossibility to truly rest in our capitalist society: “I will never question the merits of rest. But in the hands of liberalism, rest and self-care has become highly individualized, reduced to a choice, which shifts the burden away from the very institutions that steal our time, energy, and resources in the first place, and onto the backs of the global majority. The choice to rest is a luxury few can actually afford, and I want to hold space and discontent for that.” Rest is not resistance and that is ok
  • Are workplaces inherently toxic? : We all have stories of toxic workplaces in our careers. This article gives an overview of toxic workplace, and how common it is in the workers’ lives. “Within a capitalist system, the dynamic of worker and boss is already set up to be toxic.” “It’s not clear whether toxic behaviour is on the rise or if increasingly open discussions about mental health, sexual harassment, and racism, among other forms of discrimination, are shining a light on some fundamental flaws in the way we work.”
  • The feel-good story of the week: “The benefits of living in the same place for a long time“
  • Women’s health: The unique toll of stress and depression on women’s hearts As women are more prone to depression and lots of stress in their lives, this article talking about women’s hearts is scaring a bit. Not enough studies have been done on women, and it’s only recently that there’s been an interest in women-focused health.

Quote of the week:

Pay it forward. If someone helps you, pay it forward by helping someone else. Don’t underestimate the power of a small act of kindness.

TO SEE

  • Instagram account of the week: Karim Amr. Beautiful picture of my beloved Egypt, giving a romantic vibe to this region of the world
  • The Human scale: A documentary about how to live in urban cities among problems of urban sprawl, climate changes, loneliness and health issues over our ways of life. “The Danish architect and professor Jan Gehl has studied human behavior in cities through four decades. He has documented how modern cities repel human interaction, and argues that we can build cities in a way, which takes human needs for inclusion and intimacy into account. ‘The Human Scale’ meets thinkers, architects and urban planners across the globe. It questions our assumptions about modernity, exploring what happens when we put people into the centre of our planning”

TO FOLLOW

  • En Français: Le compte Instagram de frdgngrs, remplis de sagesse et de quotes inspirantes.
  • A blogger I’ve been reading for a long time: The Bloggess. Dark humor, honest take on mental health, and taxidermy. I fucking love her!

RECIPES

CYBERSECURITY

  • Tool of the week: if you need to search the online presence of a username on the web, What’s my name is your tool!

DESIGN

  • Color palette web app: upload your image, and create your own color palettes by picking the colors in your pictures, creating a reusable palette that you can then use in your projects. Colors exported in HEX, RGB and HSL

TECH & WEB

  • WordPress Studio: Just discovered this tool to develop local/test sites on WordPress on your computer. Under 5 minutes, you have all your setup ready to code and test your new website on your computer, without having to setup any local dev environment (like Wamp, Xamp ou EasyPhp, or all the dependencies). I really love how I can start creating new WordPress websites, create new themes or test new plugins in a test setup really under 5 minutes!
  • A nice article that give good advices about how to view their job and daily tasks as a frontend developer: “Care beyond code: 7 best design practices for frontend developer” Despite the fact that designers are working on design, frontend engineers shouldn’t stay aside. An engineer’s involvement in the design side and their attentiveness to UX and UI is a recipe for a good project.
  • An interesting take on Laravel and fullstack web development, giving pros and cons over the framework. Honest take from me: it’s one of the rare frameworks that I love working with! So easy to do any (front/back) web development with it! That and WordPress.
  • Manifesto for a Humane Web: an manifesto about how the web should be constructed by humans FOR humans, and not for bots and AI.
  • Javascript library of the week: Ogma, the library for large-scale interactive graph visualizations
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Links I’d share in private #7

This week, I’m trying something different: adding Category names between my links’ shares/text. I wanted to give a quicker way for folks to browse my content, and go straight to their fields of interest.

Keywords this week: history of blogging; Ed Zitron; personal branding; billionaire tech money; beautiful art account to follow; some inspirational images; and a lot of opinion and articles on the subject of how bad Google Search is becoming.

To Read

  • “We’ve been waiting 20 years for this“: This is an article about the history of blogging and its potential resurgence, discussing its rise in the early 2000s and its impact on journalism. It also explores the reasons why blogging declined, the possibility of a new blogging revolution, and that the new wave of blogging will be focusing on personal expression and niche communities rather than mass audiences. You’ll understand that this article got my interest as I consider myself a blogger from the first wave, having started blogging back in 2000 on LiveJournal!
  • Quote: “Go for a walk. A long walk can free you from even the most vicious of mental prisons.”
    I can’t agree more! Walks have kept me sane for decades, and have always been my ways of healing, taking time to explore my surroundings, and take the time to just breathe while enjoying the views. I even used to have my own category of blog posts, called “Chroniques du Voyeurisme”, where I wrote about what I saw when I was able to view inside people’s houses and inner lives for a moment. On another note, this tip for long walks from Kottke’s website is full of wisdom.
  • Author I’ve discovered this last week – Ed Zitron: I’m sharing 3 articles I’ve read from this author, which I’ve loved for his intake on the economy (it’s rotting), Google Search (it’s getting shittier), and AI (did it peaked yet?). Lots to simmer, but I think there is something rotting in the land of Tech & the Economy, and Ed has a way with words.
  • “The Gravitational Force of Tech Money“: Dave Karpf examines the significant influence that large sums of money from the tech industry have on various sectors, particularly politics and innovation, arguing that the massive influx of tech money has reshaped the landscape, often dictating the direction and priorities of technological advancements and political campaigns in a wrong direction, not for the benefits of humankind. It points out that the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few tech companies can stifle competition and limit the diversity of ideas and innovations. Additionally, the sway these companies hold over political processes raises concerns about the health of democratic institutions and the potential for policy decisions that favour corporate interests over public good.
  • “Elite College Admissions Have Turned Students Into Brands“: Everything is becoming a matter of personal branding now, and how you “sell” yourself to the masses. In this article, it goes over how younger generations are being pushed to forge an “impressive identity” and personal brand in their teenage years to have a better chance for contingented school programs and work opportunities. It’s getting crazy hard out there in our society, and I am scared for the pressure of performance it’s going to have on my own teenager in the next couple of years…

Images

Music

  • Playlist to listen to: All Tabs: One of the newsletters that I follow, Today in Tabs, has shared a HUUUGGGGGEEEEEE music playlist on Spotify, and so far, I love it. Lots of new musical discovery, but also lots of classic songs I liked in the past, relistening to them is fun.

To Follow

  • I’ve discovered this Artsy Page, Il Mondo di Patty, on Facebook this week, and I really love it! It’s not at all become they had interesting arts with cats, noooooooooooooo 😉

Design

Cybersecurity

  • Like this person wrote on her LinkedIn page, do more searches on Bing search engines! Not only is it becoming more accurate than Google, but its ways of evaluating content – and showing it in results – seems much more solid than currently on Google. “Bing and Google have different ways of ranking websites in search results. Bing focuses more on traditional SEO (search engine optimization) factors like keywords in domain names, page titles, and metadata, while Google prioritizes context and semantics (this is a good example for why you should use both!). Bing tends to prioritize content that has been around for a while or has already attracted significant traffic. It also has a preference for websites with top-level domains like .gov or .edu.”
  • Interesting PDF on online searches theories that I stumbled upon in my OSINT newsletters I am reading. Learning about +Fravia and its impacts on the community was a nice rabbit holes on this weekend!

Web & Tech

  • There are a LOT of talks online over the Google Search and AI Overviews these last few days, and boy is it going wrong for Google right now. This article is resuming how websites have suffered tremendous views on their webpages, and how Google’s algorithms seems to be prioritizing forums over credible websites. I have a feeling it’s going to be an intense debate in the next few months over Google’s credibility and usefulness as a search engine, and I suspect a rise in other search engines tools like Bing, DuckDuckGo and – yes, still existing! – Yahoo as Google continues to force AI into users’ throats…
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Links I’d share in private #6

Another week, another blogpost where I share what I read/saw/love from my Internet bingeing. This week’s keywords: a yummy recipe; on missing human curation (which I am doing with my blogposts 😛 ); on AI enhancing/destroying the current Tech job market; many beautiful Instagram accounts to follow; romanticizing life on low budget; and diet culture is (fucking) everywhere.

  • An easy and yummy recipe: Tofu and veggie stir-fry in sweet ginger sauce. A default recipe, easy to do on week nights, healthy and very tasty. You can replace the tofu with any meat or chickpeas.
  • To read “I miss human curation“: ohhhhhh how I miss the good old days of StumbleUpon and random Internet serendipity. Cassidy Williams’ post captures my feelings about how the algorithmic social medias of today kinda kills the randomness of discovering new authors and interesting content online. Her text gave me the encouragements needed to keep pushing myself to write on my own blog, curating all of my favourites of the moment into interesting articles and blogposts.
  • Free images: I’m a sucker for beautiful pictures. And being a content creator, I like to add meaningful photos to my blog posts, adding some visual features to gain attention for my content. So I’m sharing these free websites where you can find beautiful graphics for your online content: Lummi, Pexels, Unsplash, Pixabay, Freepik,
  • Article “When new technologies arrive, who wins and who losses?“: on how AI tools can enhance – and destroy! – the current Tech job market. “Perhaps not surprisingly, the researchers found that when a new tool can perform a task in place of a worker, all affected workers suffer. “They experience a loss of wage earnings, and that is largely independent of age, their income level, which sector they’re working in, the type of job that they do, or whether they have a college degree,” Papanikolaou says. But when a new technology complements workers performing a task, the effects are more variable: the most experienced and highly paid workers suffer, while new hires appear to benefit.” Having felt this first-hand in my web development field – and as a senior web developer – I can concur with this phrase a lot. The most experienced folks are the ones being affected the most, especially with AI now. Anybody can code with the help of AI: the senior ones aren’t as “necessary” as before. That being said, experienced folks can be moved to more analytical/counselling level jobs, which can be better in terms of challenges and work load. So, we’ll see how it pans out in the next 18 months…
  • Instagram account to follow: @thandiwe_muriu
    I’ve been following more and more folks from the african continent on my social networks, and I’ve discovered many interesting stuffs: colors & patterns, music genres, artists to follow, countries to visit… It is a fascinating continent with a different beat of life, and I want to learn more about all the diverse tribes and nations there. Today, I’m presenting an artist that I love their photos and patterns.
  • Nice app “Easy Anatomy 3D”: I love anything related to human biology/anatomy, and I had the chance to come across this wonderful little app showing the human body in all its splendour and amazingness. It gives tons of information about any part from the human body, and I would have loved to have this app when I was studying anatomy back in cegep!
  • “Romanticizing a “low spend” spring” : source
    Interesting ways to enjoy our current “hot” spring in Montreal without breaking your budget. I’ve been on a budget for the last 6 months, and it really made me enjoy life more. No need to spend tons of money to enjoy life!
@morgagefreeleigh on Instagram
  • Article “When diet culture sneaks up on you“: Oh boy did this article made me react strongly. Being “harassed” by my doctor to absolutely lose weight _at all cost_, I can’t help but cry out a little over the culture of diets impacting us all in incredibly little details. This obsession with being slim is getting to a ridiculous extent, and is pretty toxic to me. I understand controlling weight for health reasons, but as I grow older, the body is having a much more difficult time losing that fat, and so far, the only way I have found to NOT gain weight is to restrict myself and _fast_…which ain’t healthy, I’ll be honest. But when I eat, I do not overly obsess over what I eat: I try to stay healthy but ENJOY the food that I eat. Still, the pervasiveness of the diet cultures is everywhere, and I am trying hard not to influence my teenager entering their growth period…
  • Another Instagram to follow: Alvaro Cubero Wildlife: If you love beautiful animal photos, you will fucking love this account!
  • A good question for my readers: How do you handle stress? Be honest, and share with me. It can be in the comments below, on social media, or in private! I’m curious to know, as I went through a burnout/stressful year in 2023, and stress has ALWAYS been a pain in the ass in my life…
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Working outside / Travailler dehors

Ça commençait à faire depuis Février que je rêvais d’être sur ma terrasse, à travailler dehors au chaud. Done ✅️

I’ve been dreaming about working outside on my terrasse since February… Finally ✅️

remote #remotework #remotelife #worklifebalance #sunny #terrasse

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Links I’d share in private #5

This week, I’m sharing links, quotes, images & videos that I came across while Internet binge-watching/reading. Keywords for this week: Younger generations have it harder; Software/Web Development is going to shit; how to start in Cybersecurity/Information security; and the use of memories and history in the current Israel/Gaza conflict.

  • An interesting video to watch: Scott Galloway’s “How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future”

    The speaker may use American statistics, but we can easily relate it to our Canadian experience. Capitalism is making it so hard for young generations to success in life, and the rising cost of education, housing and food makes it hard for us to acquire wealth. The promised transfer of wealth from older generations to younger ain’t happening, and corporations are getting insanely richer while workers’ salaries is stagnating. “We’re economically attacking the youngs…but I know, let’s attack their emotional and mental well-being” Things need to change…

  • “JavaScript bloat in 2024”

    Up until very recently, my full-time job was as a Web Developer. And boy did my day-to-day job changed A LOT in the last 5 years. Everything became JavaScript frameworks: everything became React, VueJS, Angular, etc. And while it does simplify “sometimes” the job of a developer in quickly creating websites and tools, it has unfortunately helped participate in the enshittification of the Internet. This article shows how websites across the globe relies too much on JavaScript frameworks, making the websites bigger and bigger to download and process on folks’ browsers and devices. This quote resumes what I think about it: “It’s not just about download sizes. I welcome high-speed internet as much as the next guy. But code — JavaScript — is something that your browser has to parse, keep in memory, execute. It’s not free. And these people talk about performance and battery life… Call me old-fashioned, but I firmly believe content should outweigh code size. If you are writing a blog post for 10K characters, you don’t need 1000× more JavaScript to render it.”. Websites should be just that: HTML, CSS and some backend languages like Python or PHP, with a little sprinkle of JavaScript here and there. NOT the entire website coded in JavaScript!

  • “React, Electron, and LLMs have a common purpose: the labour arbitrage theory of dev tool popularity“

    Which brings me to another subject in the Web Development sphere: the rise of frameworks over languages expertise in my field of work is bad for software/web developers everywhere! This quote from the article resumes it well: “If you work as a software developer, it means employers will continue to emphasise frameworks over functionality because that makes you easier to replace. They will sacrifice software security to make your job easier to outsource. They will let their own businesses suffer by shipping substandard software because they believe they can recoup those losses at your expense.” It suddenly puts into perspective all the tech layoffs for 2023-2024! Frameworks make workers interchangeable, and experts workers are finding it harder to perform well in this type of environment, as they are forced to get into one coding mindset over a multitude of skillsets/expertises. The entire article is quotable, as I think it pinpoints why the software/web development field has gotten shittier in the last 5 years… Let’s bring back unions!

  • “In the shadows of the Holocaust“

    The article give a good overview of how politicians can weaponize the Holocaust history to their own political agenda, amplifying the antisemitism we are seeing across the world. “How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today.” A powerful article to read on the subject.
  • Quote: “Everything gets old. Life is full of diminishing returns. At some point, more money, fame, prestige, travel, or sex won’t make you any happier. Learn to recognize when you have “enough.”” Source

  • “Getting into Information Security“

    As someone involved in the cybersecurity scene, we get asked a lot about how to start in that field: where to start studying, what to study/read/watch, where to look up for work, etc… This article is a good base for how to start into, and give good tips and advices on how to do it.
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Links I’d share in private #4

This week got me busy on the reading. Again, lots of interesting articles and shares coming your way!

  • I hate the word Happiness. There is an entire philosophy and ways of life behind this word that I do not like: people seeking Happiness at all cost tend to ignore bad emotions (like pain, grief, loss, sadness), and push this goal as an ultimate must. Which is why I prefer to say that I want to be content with my life, and to have interesting moments instead. This quote from the article is a good résumé on it: “The fact that you might desire a man, a woman, a car, a watch, a piece of jewelry, or a trip doesn’t matter. On the day you have that man, that woman, that car, that watch, that piece of jewelry, or that trip, you’ll realize it’s time to desire something else. So, I usually say I don’t want to be happy… I want to have an interesting life. Having an interesting life means living fully. This presupposes being able to despair when losing something important to you. You need to fully feel the pains: losses, mourning, failures. This idea of happiness that tries to shield us from everything bad is a tremendous disaster.”
  • The entire saga of J.K. Rowlings and her stance on transidentity have left a sour taste in my mouth: as a “Potterhead”, fan of the Wizarding World and all of its literature, Rowling’s opinions on trans activism abruptly made me lost my interest in the entire Harry Potter world. And I am not alone: tons of fans felt abandoned after the author’s vocal opinions on trans people, making a lot of fans feel empty and broken. Laurie Penny wrote a post over the disillusion and treason folks felt in the fandom after Rowling’s opinions became public, feeling completely abandoned. “The children who grew up reading Harry Potter became teenagers who used the Potterverse as a way to connect with each other and interact with politics. That’s a good story. But it’s not the end of the story. Because what happened next was that we became adults, many of whom questioned what our most beloved stories had taught us about what it meant to be good – and what it meant to have power, or to misuse it.” “And what I’ve observed is glorious and heart-breaking: a core fandom that built itself around a series of stories about tolerance, friendship, fighting for what they believe is right and using power responsibly taking those lessons seriously enough that when the time came, it simply rejected its creator and walked away.”
  • A nice music video – Nia Archives Unfinished Business
  • In “Are Well-Being Apps Actually Harming Us?“, the article highlights concerns regarding the potential negative impacts of certain well-being apps, and advocates for more responsible practices within the industry to safeguard user well-being and privacy. A study conducted by Mozilla suggests that many popular well-being apps may be causing more harm rather than providing benefits. And since these apps are being pushed more and more at work by well-intentioned HR and managerial teams that want to show they care about their employees’ mental and physical health, it cause major harm. “The lessons learned? Despite ostensibly helping vulnerable workers, these apps frequently harm them in three key ways. They promote unrealistic expectations; they shift the responsibility for maintaining a healthy workplace away from the employer and toward the employee; and they amplify harmful mentalities such as performative positivity.”
  • Poetry presented in interesting multimedia/interactive ways? The HTML Review will be your fix! (better viewed on desktop/laptop)
  • Instagram account of the week: Vallesia Obscura
    I’m a sucker for anything Goth. Goth art, goth fashion, goth aesthetics…My soul is a Gothic Punk, and any image in that aesthetic will catch my eyes. Which is why I share this artist’s account!