I am returning to Facebook—"Zounds, Bill! While Google plays in the shadows, Facebook might as well run up a Jolly Roger atop its user database! You know that the honey badger is its corporate mascot!" Let's just say I've let it go of my tension regarding Big Tech...can I change it for the better or smack developers over the head with a newspaper with a stern, "Bad Devvy, bad?"

I've been out in the digital desert for far too long. There are reasons for that, of course, and the superficial ones are always the easiest one to list. The real reasons...well, the real ones hurt...at least once upon a time. Do they still or are they exhibits featured on a stroll through the museum of my mind? As it has been sung:

When you reach the part where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me.
But, heroes often fail.
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just too hard to take.

Gordon Lightfoot, If You Could Read My Mind

Indeed, all of that, I have released. This is a world of imperfect information, isn't it? I make decisions based on limited information and a limited mind. How can I fault others who face the same context?

It's far too easy to allow the construct featured in the Pixar movie, Inside Out, to play out, that is, joyful memories turn blue in the context of later events. Yet, I reject that for memories address specific bubbles of time—precious spheres not connected to our typical timeline of monotony and stands apart from the scaffolding of other memories.

And while that dated wing of the gallery has some astonishing pieces, visits there are just something to do on a rainy day. The thriving park outside is ALIVE with delightful dynamic iterations!

As part of that realization, I will return to Facebook—just not yet! I've got my countdown set to New Year's Eve—quite literally via JavaScript.

In the meantime, I've got books to hear, weights to lift, and a treadmill to traverse...

There's a consistency that I seek for my life. I've felt as though I jumped into an infinite amount of points simultaneously. Whether email providers, Internet browsers, web hosts, music platforms, task management, book genres, or how I choose to portray my life, I feel a multiplicity of me. It's like that scene in Limited where the protagonist is all over the place, as he cleans his apartment:

YouTube Link

Momentarily, the rapidity of this development concerned me—I even took a break from the cascade of my reading schedule. I came back with the realization that perhaps I am experiencing the ketogenic clarity I've read about along with my daily doses of cacao, max speed audiobooks, EPA/DHA fat pills etc are affecting this INTJ's cognition?

All of my activity is about examining the best way for me, putting aside the theoretical aside and distinguishing the very real pragmatic application—not what might happen...of course, the day-to-day does shape and bend our horizon, so I'm not totally without a long-term mindset. But, that is more an intrinsic personal evolution than countering what if scenarios.

Instead of being lost in the swirling winds of information as the cold front slithers and encircles, I stand in the storm and emerge as Thundercast.

After some flirting with a return to WordPress self-hosting, I'm back on GitHub. There are some design elements and extended functionality that I love having with a WordPress install that isn't available on a static site. But, even from a cache perspective, it's hard to beat the speed and security that GitHub provides. And while I pay something around a nickel a day to host my site, I still save a nickel by staying on GitHub.

It's been one of those moments where I spend more time on weighing decisions as opposed to the production itself; I find that irritating.

Eventually, I make the decision and go with GH. Not that the other path is bad—it's even a good path.

As in my web host, so too, have I considered Google. After listening to half of Gilder's Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy, I opted to leave Google behind. It's a values judgement. I firmly believe that humans are NOT just the evolutionary step toward AI—we're far more than algorithmic wetware for we were made in the image of God.

...then there's everything I've written before about Google...thus, I uninstalled Chrome and ran a factory reset on my phone and installed Aurora Store for my apps. I signed up for an account with ProtonMail and updated my other accounts accordingly.

My next step is a curious one: I'm just not letting anyone know my updated address. It's not like I had rousing volley of interactions that would be difficult to leave behind—most everyone I once knew can no longer grasp me...and those that could, were silent. I just don't think anyone cares. My Inbox is a solitary place.

And we note our place with book markers
That measure what we've lost
...
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand
You're a stranger now unto me...

Simon & Garfunkel, The Dangling Conversation

It's not that I'm going to leave everybody behind forever. I'm considering a future return to social media—* sigh * how that fails to feel! Those who once felt so alive have been framed by a display and reduced to X Y coordinates.

And the price of a memory
Is the memory of the sorrow it brings.
And there is always one last light to turn out
And one last bell to ring.
And the last one out
Of the circus has to lock up everything.

Counting Crows, Mrs. Potters Lullaby