To find truly interesting ideas, step away from the algorithmic feeds of Big Tech. — Recently I read a terrific blog post by CJ Eller where he talks about the value of paying attention to offbeat things. Eller was joining an online conversation about how people get caught up in the “status and celebrity game” when they’re trying to grow their audience. They become overly…

How to inject more weirdness and randomness into the stuff you read and see — Back in August, I wrote about the concept of “rewilding your attention” — why it’s good to step away from the algorithmic feeds of big social media. I’d originally encountered the idea via a tweet by Tom Critchlow, referencing a post by CJ Eller, riffing off an essay by Ali…

RSS brings me weirder and deeper stuff than I encounter on social media — I’ve written a bunch about “rewilding your attention” — or, spending more time reading and viewing culture that isn’t going viral on social-media feeds. Algorithmically-sorted feeds are good for some things. They let you know what are the big, popular conversations of the day, which is valuable! But if you…

Being curious and obsessed can lead to interesting places — Let me start here with a story about deep, obsessive curiosity. Back in 1964, the microbiologist Thomas Brock visited Yellowstone National Park to do some sightseeing. He was on a long car ride, and wanted to break up the monotony. While peering into the hot springs, he noticed a curious…

We’ve monocropped streets — so they’re used almost exclusively for cars. Time to rewild — In the 1970s, the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands wanted to make it easier for people to drive downtown to shop. So they took a 900-year-old canal that ran through the city, and filled in a big chunk — turning it into a four-lane highway. …

The fun of stumbling upon random old media with “LOC Serendipity” — Recently I’ve written about “rewilding your attention” — or, why it’s good to spend less time looking at the algorithmically-sorted feeds of social media … … and go hunting for the weirder, woolier stuff in the curious corners of the Internet (and the offline world, too). As I noted in…

“Marginalia” up-ranks sites that are text-heavy — with truly offbeat results. Call it “serendipity engineering” — Hey nerds: I recently stumbled across “Marginalia Search”. It’s a search engine with a fascinating design — rather than give you exactly what you’re looking for, it tries to surprise you. How does it do this? By up-ranking web sites that are text-heavy, and downranking ones that are highly visual…

“ooh! directory” is a Yahoo-like index for hunting down fun, odd blogs — As longtime readers of this blog probably know, I’m low-key obsessed with the idea of “rewilding your attention” — or, how to spend less time staring at the stuff that big-tech algorithms are pushing at you, and more time poking around in the weird corners of culture and the Internet. …