Riley

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Language learning: I tricked myself into building a daily flashcard study habit by using gambling as an incentive. I bought a box of Magic the Gathering packs and allowed myself to open one a day only after I had finished my daily flashcard study. According to Atomic Habits it takes roughly 50 days for a habit to be set in stone as part of your daily routine. A full box of Magic packs took me to day 36. Feels like a bit of an unethical life pro-tip, but once you’re over that hump of forming the daily habit it becomes a lot easier, so find a way to hack your brain and make it feel rewarding until it becomes automatic.

It’s just wild to watch Bluesky fans stumble over themselves to say it’s part of a federated future and that it’s decentralized yada yada, when it takes millions of dollars to do with it what takes me $80 for a Raspberry Pi and $15 for a domain name to do with ActivityPub.

This is very recent news but there is a group of people on Bluesky that are looking at setting up their own PDS, but it feels clear to me that the system as designed is so heavily biased against third parties doing this. It’s just such a completely different vibe compared to ActivityPub platforms that are built so strongly around the goal of making it easy to do in order to make it more widely distributed.

Reading Nevada by Imogen Binnie finally allowed me to come out as trans to myself when I was in my teens. No other book has changed my life that profoundly.