Hi Friends,
I hope you have been able to take some time away from routine in these final days of the year to spend time with loved ones, celebrate, and/or reflect.
I've been thinking a lot this year about the promise of the internet*, and how we got to where we are today instead.
I want to try something new, plus my friends in Iceland weren't using this domain and said I could have it.
Starting with a simple newsletter and site, I want to build a place to help connect people with things they wouldn't have otherwise discovered.
There's no sign-up form, no login. Just send an email to things@iliketh.is detailing the thing you like. I'll do light curation and send out a newsletter with the things people like.
If people like it, I'll do it again.
This isn't a critical analysis or even a "review." The atmosphere we’re aiming for here is the “employee picks” section at the video store or indie book store. Just make the case for giving the thing you really like a shot. If a sentence does the job, great.
To get things started, and because we're at that time of the year, I figured I'd toss out a theme.
Pick a piece of art that really stuck with you this year. It can be new, new to you, or just something that you kept going back to. Write a paragraph or two about it, or get carried away and write as much as you want. If you're not sure about tone I'd aim at "convincing a friend to give it a shot", but anything will do.
So write something up and send it by... let's say January 10 2024? (Earlier is better, don't overthink it.)
And if you want to do more than one please either keep to a short list of related items or send separate emails per item. (e.g. If you want to talk about a book and an album, two emails would be best!)
That address again is things@iliketh.is.
I like making things. And as a happy accident of birth year, childhood interests, and aptitudes, my medium tends to be the internet. Usually a joke site that is quickly forgotten, occasionally a project goes on 14 years and running, I’ve slowly come to the realization that this is what I do.
Well, I’ve been stuck for a while in part because the internet is bad now. Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification as he documented the process of corporate interests making everything that was once a place for collaboration into something else. Something profoundly shitty that we're all suffering from. For those of us who grew up believing that a more interconnected humanity would help us evolve as a species, it’s been painful.
Some of us open source hacker weirdos like myself have retreated into a mysterious place named after an extinct mammal, and I sincerely hope more will follow. (Seriously... get in touch, I will be your personal fediverse sherpa.) But I also know that it isn’t going to be for everyone. Plus, there are deficiencies in the way social media work that go beyond the ownership. Though I will say, it is a lot easier to address some of those without corporate bullshit.
For a few months this summer, I tinkered with an idea that would bring people together to make small, shared, publications. Basically a miniature social network that centers around ‘zines. I still have hope for that project, but I don’t think I’ve cracked it yet. Maybe this is a step along the path.
As I worked on that, I thought about what zines I’d want to collaborate on and I kept coming back to one. Discovering unique stuff that I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered. I decided maybe that's what I wanted to build after all.