Month: November 2024

How To Kill A Repair Industry.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

When I was writing about right to repair, FOSS and open content over at KnowProSE.com today I almost started with a more personal perspective than RMS in the MIT AI Lab. It’s a good enough story I think, but it lacks the AI loop back. It also tends to tell people more about me, and I didn’t necessarily want to be the focus.

Back when I was 9, I moved to Trinidad and Tobago and the first year or so I stayed in my grandmother’s house, in front of the Rampersad’s General Electrical Engineering workshop. There was an amazing assortment of stuff laying about, and being curious and as unsupervised as I could get away with, I would fiddle about. I made my way into the workshop as my father decided I needed more supervision, and since he was working in the workshop, it was easier for him to keep an eye on him. Plus, the guys would help him supervise me though they were much more tolerant.

The core business revolved around repairing motors. Established formally in 1936 by my grandfather, it was an important part of much of the infrastructure of Trinidad and Tobago and even the United States Navy, which then had a Naval Base in Chaguramas. He had started off by transporting motors on his old Indian motorcycle to rewind them himself at home, and ended up teaching others because he needed help.

a burned pump motor in need of rewinding, circa 2002.
A burned pump motor in need of rewinding, circa 2002.

Over time, I began understanding the how of the repair, but what escaped me at that age was the theory of why. I eventually got the hang of it, but I was not as good as my father, and if you asked him, he was not as good as his. That was high praise to me because I had seen my father walk in and simply listen to a motor and diagnose it at a client site.

Much of the rewinding was done by reverse engineering – a monotonous task of counting windings when taking the old ones out, measuring things, and so each motor had it’s own book and was stamped once rewound so that it could be referred to. It was a lot cheaper than buying a new motor in a developing country in most instances, and if they needed a new motor, we had those too.

It wasn’t a bad way to grow up. I got exposure to electromechanical troubleshooting at a young age. Sometimes it was the motor, sometimes the cause was around the motor: lack of maintenance was a big issue, lack of vibration dampening another, and sometimes it was the load on the motor that increased. Sometimes it was simply the quality of electricity that the State owned electric company (T&TEC) provided. Sometimes a motor sat too long and the bearings needed changing.

I left, I did other stuff, I came back, and I almost always ended up dealing with the workshop in some way. In time I ended up being a Director, but the business was being closed soon after because the inertia of the local market could not be defeated by the company. I was sad to see it closed, and with the family issues involved, I distanced myself.

In time, Chinese motors started popping up and could not be rewound because they used plastic armatures. Because they were cheaper than rewinding a motor, people bought them. This didn’t help the business at all – it worked against it. Effectively, the Chinese manufacturing had eliminated the right to repair by making the armatures that way. In time, though, people wanted their motors repaired and found out that they couldn’t be repaired.

For at least a decade, I had people calling me about motor repairs, and I’d put them on to some of the former employees who had started their own businesses. The core of their business tended toward electrician work, but some of them continued rewinding – and some of them I knew since I was 9, getting in trouble around the workshop.

The effective lack of right to repair and the inability to repair the newer imported motors practically killed a local industry, but it wasn’t a well-known industry. It still exists, though to a much smaller extent, and motors that can’t be rewound are probably stripped of their copper. Single use.

Things should be multiple use.

I also grew up with cobblers who fixed shoes, who are now almost extinct. In a developing nation, getting things to work longer is important, but when cheap shoes flooded the market, the same thing happened: cobblers began disappearing.

For small nations, those repair industries are needed much more. They help reduce the amount of foreign exchange spent, they employ people, and they allow a robustness when prices go up.

Prices always go up.

How Relevant Are The Lenses We Look Through?

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

Shifting and exploring perspectives is one of the things I do a lot of. A lot of creativity and innovation, in my experience, comes from just that. I’ve thought of them as lenses that we look through – and how we look through them is defined by various modes of thought that we employ.

Let’s start with the lenses. We look toward the future through lenses scratched by the past – we can call the scratches ‘traumas’ in some contexts that give them a negative connotation, but in some contexts learning not to burn your hand on the stove is what I think is a necessary trauma.

Bias isn’t always error.

If we dare step out of our individual shells, we see things like this culturally as well. I’m pretty sure when a tribe got sick after someone showed up that didn’t belong to the tribe, they might consider anything foreign bad. Anyone that doesn’t look like them, doesn’t worship the same ‘God’, or… the list can go on. So we stare through that lense, culturally, wherever the accident of geography of birth placed us.

This in turn impacts the individual lens, which has a feedback loop to the cultural lens, and if you get a group of people who share the same view through the lens, it can create a subculture or if enough people are involved, can churn to become a part of the greater cultural lense.

When healthy, such lenses can keep people from harm.

When unhealthy, those lenses can be harmful not just to those who look through them but those who are looked at through them. Those that are looked at also look through lenses much the same. Perspectives can clash violently, which we’re seeing every day in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa – but it’s probably happening right outside your door.

One of the keys to understanding situations is being able to understand the lenses. How do you look at something? How does someone else? Why do you look at it that way? Why do they?

In this way, we sometimes find ourselves taking shortcuts again – they are evil, they are stupid, they are animals, etc. Once that happens these days, there’s bound to be violent change (but not necessarily violence) not too soon after, and more importantly, it keeps people from actually resolving whatever issues they have.

That doesn’t seem like it’s progress. So how do we fix that?

That seems like one of the biggest questions of humanity. I don’t have the answer and I would worry if someone said that they had one. In my own life, my experiences with this have had inconsistent results and I think that’s because sometimes being self-aware and mindful are not enough. Sometimes no matter how we try we’re looked at through lenses that we have no control over.

Maybe the trick is everyone understanding their own lenses, their own biases, but is it a bias if everyone around you looks through the same lens, as in an echo chamber? Not everyone will do that.

It begins with questioning our own beliefs in contexts outside of our comfort zone, maybe.

A Tumbleweed Looks in Astonishment at It’s New Roots.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment
A window looking out onto a sunset, with a desk and writing implements on it.

Sometime this weekend, I noticed a change that gave me pause – enough pause to consider what the change was. I’ve been living in this place for 6 years, going on 7, which is a new record for me. The longest I had stayed in one place has been 6 years, back in the 1990s.

I hadn’t realized it, but there was this feeling of being temporary everywhere I was since I was about 9. There was a feeling that I’d have to move, that some things weren’t worth doing to a place because I’d be off and about sooner or later.

The idea of ‘home’ never really resonated with me. Ask me where I’m from, and I’ll look at you funny before giving any number of answers. I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but it’s not where I grew up. I grew up all over.

I suppose this is the sort of thing that most people don’t understand. Most people seem to have this concept of permanence with a place, and I don’t, or haven’t. I expect it’s sort of like someone discovering running water and telling their friends who grew up with running water.

This weekend, though, once I finally found and placed the rug and stopped and enjoyed it now and then – my feet happy on it whenever I walked on it – I realized something had changed.

I had been talking to someone about replacing my front door for aesthetic reasons. That hardly sounds like me. A door is a door until it’s not the right door. I’ve reorganized everything for the most part, allowing myself the space I crave around me. I don’t like feeling closed in. I like the open.

The place had somehow become a home, and I’m not sure what to do with that. It’s not something I’m used to. I’ve spent most of my life either living out of a bag or waiting to live out of a bag, not getting too comfortable even when I had the opportunities. It just didn’t feel like I was allowed to. It didn’t feel like it was who I was.

Now, suddenly, it does. The idea was so out of my past contexts that I had to just sit and think about it, and why I had never really felt at home before.

Why was I so rootless before? Was it because I’m a TCK? Was it that avoidance attachment disorder (which I loving call my detachment order)? Was it cultural nomadism? Was it a lack of place attachment?

I don’t know, it was likely a mix of all of those things ran through a blender on frappe.

I’d never realized it about myself until I realized I was attached to this place. A home. A place where I am safe, comfortable, and can squinch my toes in a rug. I wonder how else it impacted my life, but not too much.

There are things to do.

Read From The Future, Words Look Silly

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An image of SEO in scrabble tiles, standing on edge, with a light point at the top left that causes shadows to be to the lower right. Random blurred tiles lay flat behind 'SEO'

I read the news every morning with my coffee – the stereotypical man who reads the newspaper, modernized to scanning things through his phone and computer. It’s a terrible way to start the day, but in the information we have to know what’s going on or we’re stuck in the mud.

Certain words and phrases leap out. With wars all over the world – Sudan isn’t covered that well – I noted ‘massive attacks’ all over the place and it lead me to wonder how a massive attack now compares to a massive attack in the future or past. Then you generally see how many people were killed in the article, somewhere hidden maybe, and this morning I saw 4 as the number. I’ve seen ‘massive’ used for much larger numbers, but apparently now the threshold for a massive attack is 4 people dead.

This is not to say that every person that dies is not significant. Every life has value. Yet when we’re reading about loss of life, as in this example, SEO and Sensationalism create false weights in things just so that something is read.

In the digital age, where attention spans are short and competition for clicks is fierce, sensationalism and SEO-driven writing have taken center stage. While these techniques are undeniably effective at grabbing attention, they often come at the cost of depth, authenticity, and meaningful communication. The quest for virality and search engine dominance has diluted the essence of quality content.

And it will impact us through LLMs that are trained on scraped content.

The Rise of Sensationalism

Sensationalism thrives on exaggeration and emotional manipulation. Headlines like “You Won’t Believe What Happened Next” or “The Shocking Truth About [Topic]” are designed to spark curiosity, but they rarely deliver on their promises. Instead of providing valuable insights or fostering genuine understanding, sensational content often:

  • Overpromises and underdelivers.
  • Oversimplifies and even misrepresents complex issues.
  • Promotes clickbait over substance.
  • Diminishes reading comprehension.

While sensationalism might temporarily increase page views, it erodes trust over time. And time erodes some words too. Readers become wary of exaggerated claims and disengage, ultimately harming the credibility of the writer or publication. Do you want to trade short term revenue for reputation? That seems to be what a lot of online marketing focuses on.

Consider the word ‘New’ you find in an article from 1985. It has no real meaning in 2024 except telling people it was new when the article was written. Hopefully there’s a date on it- some sites don’t show the date something was published. If there is the reader might realize that the ‘new’ Windows 1.0 is not that new.

Talking about the future, too, didn’t work out well for most writers except those that imagined a future that was compelling enough for people to work towards it.

The Impact of SEO on Content Depth

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a powerful tool for visibility, but its misuse has led to a formulaic approach to writing. Content creators are often pressured to prioritize keywords, meta descriptions, and search algorithms over the quality of their message. This focus results in:

  • Keyword Stuffing: Repeating the same phrases disrupts the natural flow of content, making it feel robotic and unnatural.
  • Shallow Information: Articles are designed to rank high in search results but rarely offer comprehensive insights. The goal becomes “ranking” rather than “resonating.”
  • Homogenized Content: SEO encourages following trends, which can lead to an echo chamber where originality and diverse perspectives are lost.

In an age where, in 2024, we have been talking about echo chambers for years, social networks get blamed and yet people who share content to the networks have already been in algorithmic echo chambers based on some content.

The Dilution of Meaning

When sensationalism and SEO-driven tactics dominate content creation, the essence of meaningful writing is lost. Here’s how:

  • Complex Issues Are Simplified: Topics that deserve nuance and careful exploration are reduced to soundbites or listicles, or worse yet, sticky infographics surrounded by content made to come out on top of an algorithm.
  • Authenticity Is Compromised: Writers often prioritize what sells over what matters, leading to a loss of personal voice and integrity.
  • Readers Are Left Unsatisfied: Audiences craving depth and understanding find themselves wading through superficial content, unable to uncover real value. I know this is the main issue I have and have had for decades, and increasingly so.

Finding Balance: Writing with Integrity

Does this mean we should abandon SEO and engaging headlines altogether? Not at all. Instead, writers and marketers can aim for a balance between visibility and value:

  1. Prioritize Authenticity: Write with your audience in mind, not just algorithms. Focus on what they truly need and want to learn. We all have to play the game, but we can choose how we play the game.
  2. Use SEO Strategically: Incorporate keywords naturally, ensuring they enhance rather than detract from the content.
  3. Deliver on Promises: If your headline promises something extraordinary, make sure your content lives up to it.
  4. Focus on Depth: Invest time in research, analysis, and thoughtful writing. Readers appreciate content that goes beyond the surface.

Conclusion

Sensationalism and SEO writing are not inherently bad, but when they overshadow the purpose of content, meaning is inevitably diluted. As creators, we have a responsibility to prioritize authenticity and depth over cheap tricks and fleeting trends. In a world flooded with shallow content, meaningful writing stands out—and that’s what readers remember.

And if you need pain to reinforce this, consider what happens when algorithms change and your content is suddenly not as popular. It has happened before, it will happen again. What’s worse, that content might be scraped by someone training an LLM so that it will spit out that gobblygook thinking it qualifies as ‘good writing’.

Good content, at least in my opinion, should last. That’s why Gutenberg.org is filled with classics that people want to read.

By committing to substance over sensationalism, we can create content that not only captures attention but also earns respect and fosters trust. And in the long run, isn’t that what truly matters?

Further reading:

You can revel in how the SEO works in those articles, or doesn’t.

Scraping A Living Out Of the Age of Scrapers

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 2 Comments

One of the reasons I have not been writing as much for the past for months was analysis paralysis. For years in corporate technology settings, I promised myself that I would make good on getting to writing at some point. I made a decision in the early 1990s to pay bills and help support parents rather than be the broke writer that had to compromise himself to earn a living. The world changed.

My plans I was in the process of making concrete were hit with the phosphoric acid of LLM training and competition even as I was laying the cornerstone.

My mother was a writer. She self-published in the 1970s through the 1990s by getting her poetry printed and, as far as I know, she never broke even. She kept writing anyway, and I think she was pretty good despite some of the opinions she expressed – she expressed them well.

There was one poem she wrote about how Poets were esteemed in Somalia and given prominence – I can’t seem to find it as she sadly didn’t publish it online – but the gist of it was that there are, or were, parts of the world where poetry was important. By extension, writing was important, and writing was respected.

Writers were seen as noble artisans of the written word, earning their keep through the sweat of ink that scrawled out of their hands and, later, keyboards. In today’s digital Wild West, writing for money online feels a bit like leaving cookies on the counter of a house full of raccoons. You’re crafting something delightful, but someone, somewhere, is plotting to grab it and run—no credit given, no crumbs left behind. Even online publishing with Amazon.com is fraught with such things, and the only way to keep from the dilution of your work is to dilute it yourself.

We find ourselves aliens in a world we created. Inadvertently, I helped build this world, as did you, either by putting pieces of code together to feign intelligence (really, just recording our own for replays) or our demand for fresh content that sparked imagination.

Welcome to the age of content scraping, where your genius headlines and painstakingly researched prose are more at risk than a picnic basket in Jellystone Park.

The Scraper Apocalypse: Who Stole My Blog?

As mentioned previously, I moved off of WordPress.com mainly because of the business practices of Automattic – particularly the aspect where they made a deal to use the content on WordPress.com as training data for LLMs with the default set for users to agree to it. Why on Earth would anyone agree to it?

Scraping is nothing new. Companies—and bots with names like “Googlebot” (friendly) or “AggressiveRandoBot42” (not so much)—are prowling the internet, vacuuming up your hard-earned words faster than you can type them to train their Large Language Models, or AIs. They aren’t even considered shady. And it’s not just shady websites in the far corners of the web. You don’t know who is doing it.

What’s left for you? Crumbs, if you’re lucky. So, how do you stay ahead of the scrapers while still getting paid?

Step 1: Write With a Purpose

Personally, I’m not too much about monetization and yet I drink coffee that costs money. It’s a reality for all of us, a system born into where I can’t pay my bills by sending people words.

Let’s start with the golden rule of online writing: never write for free unless it’s a passion project—or revenge poetry about scrapers. Every blog post, article, or eBook should have a direct or indirect income stream attached.

  • Direct Revenue: Ads, sponsored posts, or affiliate marketing links.
  • Indirect Revenue: Use your content to build an email list or funnel readers toward a product or service you offer.
  • Be yourself: technologies are increasingly mimicking, but they can’t do what you do.

Scrapers might steal your content, but they can’t siphon your strategy directly. They can, however, adapt quickly based on the information they get, so you have to stay on your toes.

Step 2: Build the Fortress: Protecting Your Content

If you’ve ever tried to protect your lunch from a determined coworker, you’ll understand this analogy: scrapers don’t care about rules. But you can make their lives harder.

  • Add Internal Links: Keep scrapers busy by linking to other parts of your site. If they scrape one post, they get a tangled web that leads readers right back to you.
  • Use Watermarks in Imagery: For visual-heavy posts, watermark your images with your logo or website URL. It’s digital branding in action.
  • Insert Easter Eggs: Include subtle shout-outs to your own name or brand. Scrapers might miss these, but real readers won’t. You do know you’re on RealityFragments.com, right?
  • Consider Subscriptions: Some websites allow you to close your content to subscribers, but you need consistent readers to pull that off.

Step 3: Turn the Tables—Use Scrapers to Your Advantage

Here’s the plot twist: sometimes, scrapers inadvertently help you. When your content gets stolen but still links back to you, it can drive traffic to your site.

But how do you ensure that happens?

  • Embed Links Thoughtfully: Include links to high-value content (like an eBook sales page or an email sign-up form). If they scrape your post, their audience might still end up on your site.
  • Use Syndication Smartly: Syndicate your content to reputable platforms, as few as they are. These platforms might outrank the scrapers and help your original post shine. Also note when you post to them, you should still expect your content to be scraped
  • Use LLMs to check your own work: LLMs are trained by scraping. My own writing is something I like to assure is fresh and original, so I have LLMs I installed that are disconnected from the Internet (instructions on how to do that with 0llama here) to assure the same. I’ve found it very helpful to make sure I’m original since they scrape everyone else’s content… (and probably mine).

Step 4: Embrace the Impermanence

At the end of the day, the internet is a giant soup pot, and everyone’s stirring it. You can’t stop all the scrapers, but you can focus on making your content work harder for you.

  • Repurpose: Turn blogs into videos, podcasts, or infographics. It’s much harder for scrapers to steal a voiceover than it is to Ctrl+C your text. I stink at this and need to get better.
  • Engage Directly: Build relationships with your audience through comments, newsletters, and social media. Scrapers can’t steal community.
  • Focus on Creating: A creator creates, and the body of work is greater than the sum of its parts. I think of this as the bird that can land on a branch not because it trusts the strength of the branch but because it trusts it’s wings. Trust your wings.

Conclusion: Keep Writing Anyway

Writing for a living online in an era of content scraping is a lot like running a lemonade stand during a rainstorm. It’s messy. There are periods of disheartenment. Life is not easy. But when the sun comes out—or when the right reader finds your work—it’s worth it.

So, write boldly, monetize smartly, and remember: scrapers might steal your words, but they can’t steal your voice, though Sir David Attenborough can argue that. They cannot take away your ability to be human and create.

Stay witty, stay scrappy, and may your words always pay their rent and bring someone value.

The Bachelor Hunt for the Domestic Rug In The Wild

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment

I suppose my first mistake was cleaning the condo.

This task cleared many flat surfaces from the detritus of my life that all seemed important at some time. This included the floor.

This included lifting a rug I had from the front door to the living room which some might call a ‘runner’. It doesn’t go anywhere, it just sits there, but people are strange and use words strangely. Regardless, I had washed it a few times over the years and when I lifted it I found the backing was no longer backing. It was a brownish grey dust in the shape of a rug. Or runner. Whatever.

A quick vacuum and mop, and I saw the imperfections of the floor as plainly as black text on white background. The text said, ‘hide me’. Granted, these are not great imperfections, but things like that bother me and I’m not ready to replace the flooring the place came with. Yet.

The dead runner that I had exhumed went into the trash. Who makes stuff you can’t just wash? There’s probably a reason that I don’t care enough to find out about, and so after 5 decades of meandering this planet I learned to get rugs I could wash.

And so, one of my missions for the last few weeks has been to find a rug to replace that one that is machine washable and is appealing. I threw in the requirement of feeling good when I wiggle my toes as well, which unfortunately I cannot test in stores without someone shouting at me or, at the least, looking at me funny.

It can’t be too dark, or it will drive me nuts with a little dirt on it. It can’t be too light for the same reason. A neutral color makes sense for me.

I did something I had not done before. I measured the floor. 39 inches by 74 inches. What an odd space. It was the odd spaces that attracted me to the condo and I like the odd angles for some reason, and being me I am convinced I can make something work.

From nearby store to nearby store, I wandered over the last week or so trying to find an exact fit in the approximations of what people want by some stores. I found some I liked that wouldn’t fit, and those that would fit I didn’t like – mainly because of the ‘toe wiggle’ test that I do with my fingers, imagining that they would be my toes.

I am not designed for this sort of thing. I absolutely hate it, but I want the result – the very definition of work.

This morning, I found myself looking at the Internet – my last resort – and found myself looking at a local website that might just have what I want.

Once more into the breech, dear friends…

I don’t understand why rug technology hasn’t increased. I don’t understand why websites don’t seem to allow you to look at products based on measurements. I think I should be able to put in my dimensions into a search box somewhere and it tells me where I can get a rug of those dimensions and with whatever attributes the rug has.

As it is, I feel like I’m sitting waiting for a rug of the right size to wander into my attention so I can grab it. Imagine, a rug I don’t have has the power over me to irritate me so much that I wrote about it.

Boring Whales Through AI And Committees: New Territory.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

The reported 20 minute conversation between whales and humans-via-AI is interesting and is probably one of the best uses of AI that I can think of (rather than writing gibberish for the Internet).

Of course, this fires up the imagination – effectively, it’s a first contact scenario, which can include all manner of mistakes that could have repercussions. It’s not hard to think of them saying funny things. Imagine chatting with an old, grizzled whale who effectively says, “Get off my lawn!” or a young whale that is going through puberty and is only chatting to impress a female whale somewhere around the planet.

There’s so much that we might get wrong.

Imagine a group of Marine Biologists of the most serious sort chatting with a pod of whales for the first time.

Marine Biologists: *summoning call*

Pod of whales shows up and starts making noise.

Marine Biologists chattering to each other, “What are they saying? They’re talking a lot!” The resident AI expert – Bob, of course – says, “Give it time, give it time, the AI is catching up. There’s a few of them making whale sounds!”

Finally, the AI spits out some text: “What do you want?”

The Marine Biologists start chattering among each other and trying to decide what to send back.

The whales leave since nothing else is happening, making sounds that carry across the oceans around the world…

The Marine Biologists gape at one another as they stare at Bob, who in turn is staring at the screen waiting for the translation:

“There’s someone pretending to be one of us but they don’t know what they want. Ignore them. Fake news!”

One of the Marine Biologists sighs and says, “Well, we screwed that up…”

“In the Future, the World Will Make Sense”

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

I was taught at a young age that the world made sense but when I grew up I found that it made as much sense as we had made sense of it.

I suppose as a child being made comfortable with the idea that the world made perfect sense made me easier to deal with.

Some people never seem to get past the need for the world to make sense. The very idea that we don’t understand the world is too much for most of us. I wake up every day wondering about something I don’t yet have the answer to – at least one thing. Every morning when I wake up there’s an implicit acknowledgement that the world doesn’t make sense and it’s fun learning new things.

Some people don’t see the world that way. Some people fear new things. Some people prefer the comfort of belief that they do understand everything. These people trouble me. In fact, they trouble other people who believe different things. No, I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about politics, which effectively is another religion. If I point out weaknesses in a candidate, these people default to thinking I must be on the ‘other side’. That’s almost never true.

People pick their own narratives, and there is nothing wrong with that. The only side anyone should pick in a democracy, in my humble opinion, is their own. You’re supposed to vote your interests in a democracy.

In this past election, some people voted for the building that they sought comfort in. Some voted for the wrecking ball because that building bothered them for some reason, though there are no plans to build anything in it’s place. This election is a reset on a lot of things in that regard, and the next one could be better, or it could be worse, and everyone will have an opinion on that and some will be told their opinion by people with impossible hair on their favorite news channel.

All you need to be a pundit is to get people to believe that they are less intelligent than you are, and it’s alarming how easy it is. Cherry picking facts, painting with a broad brush, and hair that defies the body it’s on.

Part of getting past that is understanding our own biases. Someone in an urban setting sees the world one way, someone in a suburban setting sees it another way, and someone in a rural setting sees it in yet another way. Each one grows up in a different culture and while we like to think they have the same values, there are small differences because of the different cultures.

If you can step outside of your biases long enough, the world is not the same. Yet political pundits like you right there where you are. The systems, many of which seem broken, are designed to keep you where you are – that’s the role of bureaucracy, to stall change. And the people who profit from it all? There you are.

Does it make them bad people? Nope. Being ‘bad people’, too, has a lot to do with culture. Famously, the Greeks called anyone who wasn’t Greek a barbarian, and here we are still waiting for the barbarians.

…Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?

Those people were a kind of solution.

Constantine P. Cavafy

For lack of actual barbarians, maybe the political pundits should be who we call barbarians.

That would make more sense to me.

Democracy Is About People, Stupid.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment
what the hell?

There’s little that hasn’t been written or said about the U.S. Presidential Election. When asked about it, I have been saying that there were two bad candidates and one of them had to win.

This pisses off people who are emotionally attached to one of the two. I’m ok with that. One represented individual oligarchy, one represented corporate oligarchy, and if you can’t tell which is which then maybe you’re part of the problem.

The people whose candidate won have been pretty happy. The people whose candidate lost have been trying to figure out why. It’s gotten so bad that LinkedIn has become a toxic waste dump of curated perspectives on… well, that, the Democratic party, and all the other stuff that probably shouldn’t be posted by people who want to hire someone or be hired by someone. It’s become further polarized because of it.

And that’s what helped get the result. People are viewing ‘those people’, whoever they are, as all sorts of negative things without understanding things.

Jon Stewart and Sarah Smarsh had a conversation about it… and the content probably should have been spoken about decades ago. It’s almost an hour long, but some people really need to watch this.

Identity, class… things that I hear progressive democrats talk about a lot and yet they somehow miss the boat consistently on that.

America is a big and diverse place, and it’s bigger and more diverse than most perspectives I’ve seen expressed. I have friends across the spectrum. I don’t have to agree with them, but I do have to understand their perspectives.

When looking at politics, people look at the narratives provided and if it fits their personal experience and identity better than the other narrative, they choose that one. Rationality might be discussion before voting, but voting is emotional for a lot of people.

It’s about people. Stereotyping them in a negative way ain’t gonna make things better. Understand the people who a democracy is supposed to represent, don’t depend on data analytics.

Go outside and listen. Respect people enough not to treat them like spreadsheet.

New Host: Hostinger. Same RealityFragments

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

So… it’s been quiet around here lately, though my mind has not been. One of the things I was waiting for was jumping to a new host. Goodbye, Automattic! Goodbye WordPress.com! The tiers of managed hosting were not priced to my liking, the AI scraping thing that I really didn’t like the default setting of, etc.

Freedom comes at a cost, so I’ll have to be more about managing the site than I used to be – but it ain’t really that hard for me. Wrestling Drupal 11 would be much more of a headache at this point, but I almost did switch…

So the site is on Hostinger.com now. Well, it, as well as 2 others as well as a few unannounced projects.

I went into more technical reasoning for changing hosts at KnowProSE.com.

Web hosting is a thing. I have a technical mind, as you will see if you visit KnowProSE.com, but I have more than a technical mind, as you see here on RealityFragments.com. We are more than just one mind.

That’s a bit of a hint about one of the projects I’m working on which is a hint about one of the projects I’m working on – mainly writing.

Other than that, quite a lot has happened since last I wrote here. Despite everything, the world has managed to continue rotating.

Back to writing!