- Gemenskap i jul provides support and companionship for those who might be alone during the holiday season in Jönköping, organizing events and meals.
- GiveWell identifies the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar. The money goes to causes like malaria prevention, among others. It’s a data-driven approach, but not without criticism.
- Hug (Help Ukraine in Gothenburg) sends medical and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, alongside long-term support like helping refugees integrate into Swedish society.
- Internet Archive offers free access to books, movies, music, software, and the invaluable Wayback Machine.
- Kvinno- & tjejjouren supports and protects women and girls facing violence and abuse in close relationships. This is a local initiative here in Jönköping.
- The Swedish Childhood Cancer Fund raises money for research into childhood cancers, improving treatments, and supporting affected families and childhood cancer survivors.
- The Swedish Brain Foundation funds research into neurological and mental health conditions like multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, depression, and ADHD, with the aim of improving treatments and understanding of brain diseases.
- Wikipedia is the free, user-contributed online encyclopedia we all love and use.
- Williams Syndromförening i Sverige supports individuals with Williams Syndrome and their families, offering information, advocacy, and a community for those affected by this rare genetic condition.
- posts are collected into a digest once a day.
- posts from yesterday are deleted, forever, every day.
- posts are a draft and can be edited until the moment that yesterday is deleted and tomorrow becomes today.
- posts are only visible between people who “add” one another (“mutual follows”).
Perfect Days is a very good film about cleaning toilets. Hirayama and I share a few quirks—like lying flat on the floor while listening to music. 🍿
🚨 New blog post alert! Look at Me, Giving Away Money is the one where I might come off as a virtue-signaling asshat, but hey, give it a read and see for yourself. 👀
Look at Me, Giving Away Money
I’m lucky enough that most years, when I review my personal profit and loss statement, the numbers are in the black. After paying my taxes, covering the roof over my head, the food on my table, and saving for the future, there’s usually something left over to give away. I donate to charities sporadically throughout the year, but the bulk of my giving happens around yuletide.
In my family, we’ve decided not to exchange Christmas gifts, so having this extra money to donate is a nice way to get into the spirit of giving during the holidays.
I’ve struggled with whether I should share this or not, worried of coming off as a virtue-signaling asshat. But then, with perfect timing, Lu posted:
“Oh but I don’t like virtue signalling”
Oh fuck off
I’d rather be an annoying virtue-signaling influencer than a tight-pocketed snob
So, fuck it. Inspired by Lu’s thread, here are the organizations I sent money to in 2024.
Nine Charities
Free Money to Give Away
Many countries offer tax relief for people who donate money. You need to check what applies where you live, but here in Sweden, the tax deduction is 25% of the donated amount, capped at 3,000 SEK per year.
So, to maximize the leverage effect, donate 12,000 SEK annually, and it will “only” cost you 9,000 SEK. Pretty neat! That said, some countries have even more favorable deductions, so be sure to check with your local tax agency.
Donate Your Time
Lots of talk about donating money, which is great, but donating time is equally impactful — we always need more editors, and it’s these volunteers who create and curate our content!
– sf
Even if you have no money to spare, giving away your time and energy to a good cause makes a huge difference. And in my experience, it’s usually highly rewarding. This year, I didn’t volunteer for any charities, but I did give my time to internet friends, family, and my local community.
I maintained a website for a community association, developed Faviconique (a free Micro.blog plug-in), helped folks over at the Micro.blog Help Center, contributed to open-source projects, found and reported security vulnerabilities, advised a board of directors, assisted in a business sale, helped set up a new business (my wife’s), and evaluated a local AI startup on behalf of an investment fund.
Some years, we have neither the time, energy, nor money to give away, and that’s okay. I’ve been there. Next year might be different.
Want to connect an old digital video camera—like the Sony DCR-PC5E—to a modern Mac? You’ll need: a 4-pin to 9-pin FireWire (i.LINK) cable, a FireWire to Thunderbolt adapter, and a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter. I call it the MiniDV camcorder cable cascade. 😅 It’s not pretty, but it works!
Perfekt start på dagen med en gofrulle och nyhetsbrevsskrivande–det handlar om kvinnorna. 📚
Here’s my new Micro.blog plug-in: 💅 Faviconique! Add a personal touch to your blog with a custom emoji favicon—or keep it minimal with a solid color square. Favicons are the little icons in browser tabs, and now you can make yours stand out. Let me know what you think!
Jansson’s temptation in the making. 🤤
Curious about diving into the demoscene and/or coding for fantasy computers like the TIC-80? Tiny Code Christmas sure looks like a blast! 👾
Join us for 12 days of tiny challenges to gradually introduce you to size coding [writing very tiny programs] and effects! … A little bit of programming knowledge will help but you don’t need a lot. The challenges will introduce demoscene concepts without jargon so it is friendly for newcomers to the scene!
My #DecemberAdventure continues! Here’s a log from yesterday—maybe even non-coders will find it interesting. I’m working on a little thing for Micro.blog. 👀
izzzzi sounds cozy af. (via maya.land)
izzzzi is an experiment which might be called “slow social media” where we are exploring a multitude of constraints imposed on the standard mechanism of people making posts:
Psst. I haven’t told anyone yet, but I’m quietly doing a low key #DecemberAdventure. My goal is to write a little bit of code every day this December. You can follow my log here and Eli does an amazing job collecting other adventurers. 👀
I just released version 1.2.0 of Surprise me!, my Micro.blog plug-in for amusing your visitors by taking them to a random post on your blog. This is a small update focusing on performance and fixing an annoying blinking issue that occurred in some browsers. 🚀 Thanks to @kottkrig for helping out!
I shed a tear or two watching the documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. Do yourself a favor and watch it.
To clarify: there are so many things I want to do, but my chains always pull me back. Luckily, I have found my escape, and it’s not too uncommon today. My great escape is gaming. I boot up the computer, get into position and then I leave this world. It’s not a screen, it’s a gateway to wherever your heart desires.
Technology can be so damn empowering.
It’s so cozy following along with the Poetry Camera team and seeing their prototype iterations. If you haven’t heard of it before, imagine a Polaroid camera—but instead of an instant photo, you get an instant poem describing the scene. Makes me want to build one for myself.
But, I do wish they’d designed it with smaller, locally run models. Feels like that could have worked for a project like this.
Ryan, Kelin, and Evan with the new camera.
Jag behöver inte en neonskylt från tv-programmet Sajber.
The point was to get out and to feel like you’re hunting, to feel like you’re living your life. I’m going to the movies, I’m going to this show. What streaming has done—it’s very convenient, but it’s taken the feeling of going hunting and turned it into we’re all just being fed.
See also surfing the web vs. *waves hands around at whatever it is we’re soaking in here*.
Oh, yes! Let’s relearn how to surf the web. Start here, here, or here. Och om du förstår svenska, lyssna på Sanna och mig surra kring ämnet.
New look for my phone! I’d rather not have to explain Joyce Lee’s more… explicit pieces to my nieces. But Omnipresence is innocent enough to grace the back of my phone – complete with a matching wallpaper. If you’re not squeamish about skin and body fluids, check out joyceartworks. 🍑
Had an amazing night in Gothenburg last week, catching MASTER BOOT RECORD live for the first time. 🎵
In the video above, guitarist Edoardo Taddei plays the outro for BAYAREA.BMP while crowd-surfing. Huge thanks to my childhood friend, domidus, for tagging along and filming this moment!
Here’s Jackie’s Guide to Making a Website (by you & for you). Gift it to a friend, to yourself—really, to anyone who needs a personal website. (Which, of course, is everyone.)
For 27 years, I took photographs as I waved good-bye and drove away from visiting my parents at their home in Sioux City, Iowa.
– Leaving and Waving. 🥹
Over the past few weeks, I’ve sent some of my old gadgets off to new homes. Ranging from 1 to 49 years old, they all still have plenty of life and value left in them. Gotta love the circular economy!
Here’s Meryl, giving us a tour of her embroidered website. Yes, you read that right—embroidered website! 🥰 (via Ana)
It’s friday, and you should listen to Linus Åkesson’s cover of Sommarfågel by Wintergatan. 🎵
Ragù bolognese in the making—now it just needs to simmer for a couple of hours. This is my go-to when Sanna is away and I’m cooking for myself. 🤤
We're in a weird limbo shift without the right cultural infrastructure to encourage, support, distribute, and curate good quality personal writing and research.
If people are writing thoughtful, quality things on personal sites or gardens, I don't know how we'd ever find them.
RSS isn't dead. Following single sites still works.
But community distribution and curation are the missing pieces.